Acquire
Stage 3 in the Lifecycle
Acquire secures the resources and services needed to build, operate, deliver, and support the product. Without proper capacity and relationships, subsequent stages encounter delays.
What you should take away
- Understand the official purpose of the acquire phase
- Differentiate between external sourcing and internal allocation
- List the five workflow steps of acquire
- Identify who typically performs acquire in larger organizations
Official purpose
The purpose of acquire is to secure and allocate necessary resources efficiently, ensuring products and services remain sustainable and scalable.
Digital products require technology resources from both internal and external sources. Organizations need sufficient capacity and elasticity to meet demand fluctuations.
From external suppliers: identify, select, and onboard vendors; ensure relationships and sourced resource quality meet requirements and comply with policy and regulation.
Inside the organization: identify and reallocate technology resources from pools or other products when appropriate.
Key facts
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Why do it? | Secure and allocate necessary resources efficiently, ensuring sustainability and scalability |
| Who does it? | Specialized procurement teams collaborating with product, project, and other teams |
| When performed? | As needed when triggered by resource requests; regularly per contract review and budgeting cycles |
| Key outputs? | Acquired resources and services |
| Success metrics? | Resource/service quality, acquire cycle time, roadmap adherence, stakeholder satisfaction |
High-level workflow (five steps)
Analyse requirements for resources or services
Assess sourcing options
Agree terms and conditions
Procure resources or services
Communicate resource or service availability to requestor
Who performs acquire
Often a procurement function manages the process, while budgets sit with business, product, project, or technology teams.
This division frequently causes confusion, potentially leading to increased costs, delays, and suboptimal quality. Clear cost allocation to products enables more streamlined procurement.
Automated resource allocation
In highly automated environments, some resources needed for building and testing are allocated and configured automatically or semi-automatically, significantly improving cycle time. Examples include:
- Allocation and configuration of computational resources
- Provisioning of virtual environments
- Deployment of templates and pre-built standard configurations
When internal reallocation is chosen, the same five steps apply but with lower formality (no legal contracts required).
Extended procurement view
Procurement lifecycle (typical)
- Transform design into clear requirements and bills of materials
- Evaluate suppliers (RFI, RFP, PoC, due diligence)
- Negotiate contracts, SLAs, underpinning contracts, licensing
- Onboard vendors and register assets
Sourcing models
| Model | Description | When it fits |
|---|---|---|
| Insourcing | Build or run internally | Core capability, strong control |
| Outsourcing | External delivery end-to-end | Non-core, cost focus |
| Co-sourcing | Shared delivery | Blend of expertise and control |
| Cloud sourcing | Consume cloud services | Scale, speed, defer data-centre work |
| Multi-sourcing | Several suppliers | Risk spread, best-of-breed |
Related management practices
| Practice | Role in Acquire |
|---|---|
| Supplier Management | Supplier relationships |
| IT Asset Management | Asset lifecycle |
| Service Financial Management | Budget and cost |
| Risk Management | Supply chain risk |
| Information Security Management | Security in the supply chain |
Inputs and outputs
Inputs: design packages, budget, procurement policy, existing vendor relationships
Outputs: contracts, procured components and services, updated asset records, onboarding packs, readiness for Build
Metrics (examples)
- Procurement cycle time
- Savings versus budget
- Vendor performance
- Contract compliance
- Asset utilization