What to Ask Before Hiring a Technology Partner
A concise checklist of questions that help buyers evaluate a technology partner with more confidence.
The best vendor evaluation questions uncover whether the team can actually deliver, communicate, and support the product after launch. They should be practical, specific, and tied to your real goals. Here are fifteen questions to ask, grouped by what they reveal.
Key Takeaways
- Ask about similar projects, including what went wrong
- Probe estimation, change handling, and how progress is shown
- Confirm QA, code review, security practices, and IP ownership
- Meet the delivery team and agree on overlap hours and contacts
- Clarify post-launch support and handover before signing
Questions About Relevant Experience
1. Can you walk us through a project similar to ours, including what went wrong and how you handled it? 2. Which parts of our project do you see as the highest risk, and why? 3. Who on your team has built with the specific technologies we need?
Listen for specifics. A strong partner will discuss trade-offs and risks openly rather than promising that everything is straightforward. Their view of the risks also shows whether they understood your brief.
Questions About Delivery Discipline
4. What does your discovery or planning phase involve, and what do we receive at the end? 5. How do you estimate, and what happens when scope changes? 6. How often will we see working software, and how is progress reported? 7. How do you handle a deadline that is at risk?
Ask to see a sample status report or sprint review. Regular demos of working software are a better progress indicator than percentage-complete charts. See how a structured product discovery framework answers question four.
Questions About Quality and Security
8. How is testing built into your process, and who is responsible for QA? 9. How do you handle code review, and what automated checks run on every change? 10. How do you protect our data, credentials, and source code? 11. Will you sign an NDA, and who owns the IP and code?
The answer to question eleven should be simple: you own the code and IP, and you have access to the repository from day one.
Questions About the Team and Communication
12. Who exactly will work on our project, and can we meet them? 13. How much working-hours overlap will we have, and who is our main point of contact? 14. What happens if a team member leaves?
Team continuity and an accessible technical lead matter more than the size of the company. Ask how knowledge is documented so the project does not depend on one person.
Ask About Ownership Beyond Launch
15. What support do you offer after launch, and how is it priced? Clarify response times for critical issues, how updates for new OS versions and security patches are handled, and how a handover to your own team would work.
Score every vendor's answers the same way so you can compare them fairly — our guide on choosing a software development partner includes a simple weighted scorecard. When you are ready, talk to our team and ask us all fifteen.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What should I ask a software development company before hiring?
- Ask about similar past projects and their problems, discovery and estimation, progress reporting, QA and security practices, IP ownership, who will be on the team, communication overlap, and post-launch support.
- Who should own the code when outsourcing development?
- You should. The contract should assign code and IP ownership to you and give you repository access throughout the project.
- How do I compare answers from different vendors?
- Use a weighted scorecard with the same questions for every vendor, and ask for evidence such as sample reports or references to back up their answers.