You Build It, You Own It

“You Build It, You Own It” is a philosophy that teams should fully own what they build, encompassing the entire lifecycle from development through operations, not just running it.

Core Principle

Teams that build a product or service should have complete ownership over it, including:

• Building and developing it
• Running and operating it
• Monitoring and maintaining it
• Improving and evolving it
• Being accountable for its success and failures

“You Build It, You Run It” vs “You Build It, You Own It”

The phrase “You build it, you run it” misses the full spectrum of duties required to fully own a product or service. It focuses narrowly on operations.

“You build it, you own it” emphasizes:

• It’s not just about running things
• It’s about fully owning it
• Ownership includes knowledge, mandate, and responsibility
• Teams learn through full ownership

Why It Matters

Full ownership leads to:

• Better systems: Builders understand operational realities
• Faster learning: Teams learn from production issues
• Higher quality: Teams are accountable for outcomes
• Better decisions: Knowledge comes from operational experience
• Reduced silos: No throwing code over a wall

Requirements

For “You Build It, You Own It” to work, teams need the [[Ownership Trio]]:

• Knowledge: Understanding what they built
• Mandate: Authority to make changes
• Responsibility: Accountability for outcomes

Common Pitfalls

• DevOps teams as black boxes: Developers don’t understand operations
• Throwing code over the wall: Separate teams for dev and ops
• No on-call responsibility: Builders aren’t accountable for production
• Lack of mandate: Can’t make necessary changes

Related Concepts

• [[Ownership Trio]] — Knowledge, Mandate, and Responsibility
• [[Broken Ownership Archetypes]] — what happens when ownership is incomplete
• [[Platform Engineering]] — building internal platforms with ownership
• [[SRE vs DevOps]] — different approaches to operations

Source

• [[6 Archetypes of Broken Ownership]] by Alex Ewerlöf