The Hidden Costs of Building Your Own Salesforce DevOps Solution

Many Salesforce DevOps teams are tempted to build custom DevOps solutions for Salesforce. Open-source tools are free, right? While such a solution might seem attractive on the surface, the reality is that the return on investment (ROI) often falls dramatically short of expectations. 

Let's explore this topic to understand why building your Salesforce DevOps tooling is costly and diverts valuable resources from your core business objectives.

The Complexity Challenge

The first major hurdle organizations face is the unique nature of low-code business applications. The Salesforce ecosystem fundamentally differs from traditional software development platforms and requires specialized planning, building, testing, releasing, and operating approaches.

What works for conventional DevOps tools often doesn't translate directly to Salesforce's unique architecture.

Most Salesforce teams consist of a blend of technical skills, ranging from citizen developers to IT professionals. Gartner expects citizen developers to surpass professional developers 4x by 2023.

Building a DevOps solution that effectively serves both low-code administrators and professional software engineers is far more complex than it initially appears. A typical scenario is ending up with a solution only pro coders can use.

The Moving Target Problem

Perhaps the most underestimated challenge is keeping pace with Salesforce's rapid evolution. The platform releases major updates multiple times yearly, each potentially affecting your DevOps processes.

For perspective, established DevOps providers like Copado dedicate 10-15% of their development resources uniquely to maintaining compatibility with Salesforce platform updates. This is a significant ongoing commitment for an in-house team that most organizations aren't prepared to make.

The Testing Trap

Many organizations underestimate the complexity of implementing effective testing in their DevOps pipeline. True DevOps requires embedded testing capabilities, and high-quality deployments are impossible without robust Salesforce test automation.

Traditional testing tools like Selenium present a steep learning curve for low-code developers, creating a significant skills gap that teams must bridge.

Tools like Selenium are also quite brittle since they are based on the ID or XPath associated with the elements on the web page. These are not guaranteed to remain the same over time and almost assuredly will get changed the next time Salesforce does a major release.

This means that they are more expensive to write initially and have to be updated multiple times a year. This demonstrates that open-source technologies aren’t really free once you start implementing and maintaining them.

The Hidden Costs

When organizations calculate the cost of building their solutions, they often mistakenly focus only on the initial development costs. However, a custom Salesforce DevOps solution includes several cost items:
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1. Ongoing Maintenance

• Regular updates to keep up with Salesforce releases
• Several kinds of Salesforce testing are required to run smoothly
• Bug fixes and performance improvements
• Security patch management of the open-source tools
• Integration updates

2. Resource Allocation

• Dedicated development team
• Need for DevOps specialists
• The team needs to develop documentation and deliver training
• Support staff requirement

3. Opportunity Costs

• Time invested into maintaining tools rather than building business features
• Delayed project delivery due to tooling limitations
• Reduced focus on core business objectives

4. Compliance and Security

• Need to develop and maintain security controls
• Ensuring compliance with industry standards
• Creating audit trails and documentation
• Managing access controls and permissions

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The Multi-Cloud Complexity

Each Salesforce cloud (including Sales, Service, Commerce, Marketing, etc.) has unique characteristics, APIs, and requirements. Building a DevOps solution that effectively handles these differences requires deep platform expertise and significant development effort.

Each Salesforce cloud requires specific handling for the following components:

• API interactions
• Sandbox management
• Data migration
• Metadata handling
• Deployment strategies

The Scale and Governance Challenge

As organizations grow, their DevOps needs become more complex. A homegrown solution needs to be scalable enough to handle the following aspects:

• Multiple production orgs
• Various development teams
• Different release cycles
• Complex dependency management
• Cross-cloud deployments

The Better Alternative

Instead of investing in building and maintaining custom DevOps tools, organizations should consider purpose-built solutions that offer:

• Out-of-the-box functionality designed for Salesforce
• Ability to deliver complex Salesforce business process automation
• Regular updates aligned with Salesforce releases
• Integrated testing and quality control
• Built-in compliance and security features
• Scalability for enterprise needs
• Support for diverse development teams

The ROI Equation

When calculating ROI, organizations need to consider that a purpose-built solution like Copado provides numerous benefits, such as: 

• Immediate productivity gains
• Reduced risk of deployment failures
• Automated testing and quality controls
• Built-in Salesforce CI/CD best practices
• Regular platform updates
• Professional support and training

Conclusion

While building your Salesforce DevOps solution might initially seem appealing, the long-term ROI doesn't justify the investment. The combination of ongoing maintenance costs, resource requirements, and opportunity costs makes it a financially unsound decision for most organizations.

Conversely, investing in a purpose-built solution allows teams to focus on delivering business value rather than maintaining infrastructure.

The most successful organizations realize that their competitive advantage comes from building great applications on Salesforce, not building and maintaining DevOps tools. By choosing a specialized DevOps solution, they redirect resources toward mission-critical innovations that drive business growth and increase customer satisfaction.