Why go OOB!!!

I have been working on SharePoint for quite some while now. I was first introduced to SharePoint in 2007 when the MOSS B2TR had just come out. It was a different experience altogether getting introduced to a new technology because previously i had just worked on ASP.Net and Windows forms. 

Initially it was very difficult to get adapted to the change as my thought process like any developer was to start building components. So any requirement that i used to get for SharePoint fitment I used to start thinking customization. But over a period of time I realized that SharePoint is really powerful in terms of out of the box capabilities. So before thinking customization, as a SharePoint developer / consultant you should always think how can we have this requirement achieved out of the box even if it means solution doesn't meet 100% of the requirements. Now I may sound stupid here, because you may have been starting to think "what use is the solution if it doesn't meet the requirements". You are right in some sense, but not always it is required to meet the customer's requirements 100% because customers always tell requirements based on what they want. They would never think in terms of maintenance of solution, & secondly they don't understand all the capabilities of the product. That's where we need to pitch in and help them understand on why you should go for OOB development & not customization. From my experience I have noticed that most of the time 80% requirements can be met with OOB implementation and 20% with the governance. 

The advantages of going OOB is as follows

1) Low cost implementation

2) Easy upgrade 

3) Easy deployments 

Now with the customers also opting for SharePoint on cloud, it is really helpful to mold your thought process to go as OOB as possible. As deployments in the cloud can be a tedious task & also the cost of the implementations goes up significantly. 

I would really love to hear your comments or if you would like to correct me if am wrong somewhere. 

Thanks