Custom software is the most expensive answer to most problems, so it should be the last one on the list. We’ll usually try to configure, integrate or automate our way to the outcome first, and we’ll tell you when that’s the better call even though it’s the smaller project.
But sometimes there’s genuinely nothing that fits. A member portal that has to reflect your specific eligibility rules. An internal application for a process no product was designed around. A middleware layer between two systems that will never natively integrate.
When we do build, we build small and boring on purpose: the minimum surface area that solves the problem, on a stack your team or ours can keep maintaining, connected to the systems you already run rather than becoming another island.
And we plan for the second year. Custom software that nobody owns after go-live becomes a liability faster than anything else in this list.
