What is You Build It, You Run It?

John Spacey, updated on January 10, 2017

You build it, you run it is the principle that development teams operate their own product.

Waterfall vs Agile

You build it, you run it is a rejection of the common waterfall software development practice of having the development team hand off a product to support teams at the end of a project. Such models view developers and support engineers as two completely different specializations. Generally speaking, you build it, you run it is associated with agile software development approaches whereby small cross-functional teams completely manage a product.

Value

You build it, you run it can improve the quality of incident management as developers who are intimately familiar with the product are the first to be contacted when there's a problem. Developers also have the requisite skills and product knowledge to implement operational automation such as performance monitoring and automated service recovery.

Developers have more incentive to write resilient and reliable code when they know they will be called every time there is a problem. Familiarity with the day-to-day operations of the product also tends to improve software designs.

Overview: You Build It, You Run It
Type	Service Management Coding Agile
Definition	The principle that development teams operate their own product.
Attributed to	Werner Vogels
Related Concepts	Software Design Coding Coding Principles Service Management Agile