In the past, once a development team completed a new piece of software, that’s where their relationship with it would end. It would be passed to the operations team, who would then take up responsibility for its management and maintenance.
You build it, you run it is an approach where, instead of passing software to another team, the team that builds it, runs it. This responsibility ultimately drives improvements in software quality, accelerates maintenance, and increases the overall value of software throughout its lifecycle.
A development and operations model where software is maintained and managed by the team that develops it.
Higher software quality, accelerated maintenance and update cycles, and less disruption when changes are needed.
You build it, you run it represents a significant evolution in thinking, culture, and workflows for development teams.
You build it, you run it is being used to change development cultures and improve software quality.
What does you build it, you run it mean?
“You build it, you run it” is a software development and management approach where the team that builds a piece of software also remains responsible for its maintenance and management throughout its lifecycle.
It’s an important aspect of DevOps cultures, where people from a range of disciplines work together to design, develop, deploy and operate systems, services, and applications.
What’s in it for you?
When development teams know that they must support and maintain a piece of software throughout its lifecycle, that changes how they approach the development process. It drives them to put extra focus on manageability and long-term quality — ultimately resulting in better software for users.
One of the often overlooked but important benefits of this model is faster feedback from users of the system to the development team. Instead of a long cycle of support tickets through operations, the team responsible for the features get immediate visibility.
You build it, you run it also helps speed up maintenance and upgrade processes, because the teams performing that maintenance already know the software inside out. The experts retain control over software at every stage, which helps simplify management — and reduce disruption for the teams that rely on that software.
What are the trade-offs of the you build it, you run it approach?
You build it, you run it is a significant evolution in thinking, culture,and workflows for your development teams.
For businesses, it’s worth considering the potential cost of using expensive engineers to run your systems — is it necessarily the best use of their time? Sometimes it’s also a question of morale and motivation; some developers may see maintenance and optimization work in the run phase as somewhat unchallenging and hindering their ambition.
This shift in mindset required, then, encompasses both the move to a new way of working but also a way of thinking differently about the value of that work.
How is you build it, you run it being used?
You build it, you run it was coined back in 2016 by Amazon CTO Werner Vogels. It is being used to change development cultures and drive higher software quality.
It’s introducing a mindset shift for developers, guiding them toward creating the kinds of flexible, adaptable, and easily maintainable software that today’s businesses demand, and for businesses to guide them towards improving maintainability through higher quality software and automation rather than by having heavy maintenance and support operations.
