Aug 4, 2021
The Not Invented Here Syndrome
Simply put, the not invented here syndrome is a mindset that favours internally developed products over externally developed products.
NIH can be observed in individuals or organizations. It can turn into a problem when it leads to “re-inventing the wheel”.
NIH can be a result of pride or in general, less trust in solutions not created by oneself.
Impact
The impact of NIH can be observed at 2 levels:
- Individual
- Organisation
Individual-level
NIH in itself is not a good or bad thing. Its implications on individuals may vary based on the situation.
Pros
- Increased confidence in the solution, as you feel personally involved
- Evolution of both product and skills
- The best-suited solution which does not try doing everything
Cons
- Additional time and effort spent on an already solved problem
- Prone to creator bias
- More likely to have problems and un-foreseen edge cases
How to choose whether to create or use an already existing solution?
If time is of the essence and you are trying to solve a one-time problem which is a small piece of the entire puzzle, you should go with an already existing solution that facilitates solving the target problem.
On the other hand, if spending time and effort in solving this problem on your own leads to significantly reduced efforts henceforth for the same problem on top of improvement of your own skills one can choose to solve the problem on their own.
Organisation level
In the software industry, many organisations have an NIH mindset. Again, it is not a good a bad thing in itself. It can benefit or cost organisations depending upon the reason behind it.
When born out of pride or jealousy with no research behind to support it, it might cost the organisation time and resources with nothing significant to show for it.
On the other hand, when it is backed by a healthy trust and confidence in their own teams with a good amount of research and well-thought decisions it can truly lead to amazing products.
One of the great examples of this is react created by Facebook.
Often in-house products/solutions may be rewarding be it in terms of revenue or increased confidence in the team's abilities and skills.
How to choose whether to create or use an already existing solution?
At the organisation level, such a decision should be made with proof backed with facts and statistics on how either approach of building it in-house or using an already built solution would impact the organisation and business in the long run and how much resource and money it would cost.
Often external solutions may cost a bit more money but are fruitful when time, resources and effort spent are considered over the time of development.
For example, for a software organisation to make tools that speed up or ease the development might be beneficial in the long run but for a financial organisation spending time to build such tools might end in burning the resources and money.
Conclusion
NIH isn’t good or bad in itself. When deciding whether to build something in-house or not, organisations should base the decision upon the long term benefits and goals while also accounting for what it means to be doing so from the perspective of time, efforts, resources and money spent.
Sometimes it may make sense to build things in-house while at other times it is best to use an existing solution or to outsource it.
Hope you enjoyed :)
