Book excerpt: This book addresses how best to make build vs. buy decisions, and what effect such decisions have on the software development life cycle (SDLC). Offering an integrated approach that includes important management and decision practices, the text explains how to create successful solutions that fit user and customer needs, by mixing different SDLC methodologies. Features: provides concrete examples and effective case studies; focuses on the skills and insights that distinguish successful software implementations; covers management issues as well as technical considerations, including how to deal with political and cultural realities in organizations; identifies many new alternatives for how to manage and model a system using sophisticated analysis tools and advanced management practices; emphasizes how and when professionals can best apply these tools and practices, and what benefits can be derived from their application; discusses searching for vendor solutions, and vendor contract considerations.