When to Stop Building Your Own IDP - Mark Dunlop | IDPCON

We all do it. We start with a spreadsheet or document, add some automation, then eventually build a tool to automate those repetitive tasks that get in the way of what we really want to do. And that’s how the IDP journey often begins. With nothing equivalent on the market 5 years ago, it was the right decision to make and for a while it was wildly successful. But eventually with any universally unmet need, you will find yourself between two competing forces: the market will catch up and your tool will become a critical part of your internal engineering fabric. What do you do then? This is the story of how Xero made the decision to move to a 3rd party IDP and the implications for the many thousands of times that similar decisions will need to be made within your engineering org.