How to Vet a Software Development Partner Before You Sign

A polished proposal tells you very little about how a team behaves when a release slips, an integration breaks or the person who sold the project is no longer in the room. Vet the operating model before you sign.

Check the legal entity, registration details, address, tax information and the person authorized to sign. Make sure the entity on the proposal is the entity on the contract and invoice. If the jurisdiction matters to you, have counsel review the governing-law and dispute clauses.

Portfolio logos are not references. Ask to speak with clients from projects similar in size or complexity. Useful questions are simple: Did they communicate bad news early? Did the commercial model match reality? Did the team stay after launch? Would you hire them again?

Your contract should make ownership and access explicit. Decide who owns the source repository, cloud account, domains, analytics, payment-provider accounts, app-store accounts and production credentials. A handover is much easier when these decisions were made before the first deployment.

A number without assumptions is decoration. Ask what is included, what is excluded, where uncertainty is highest, which integrations are unverified and what would cause the range to move. The team should be able to explain why an estimate exists, not just read it back to you.

Agree on the difference between a bug, a missing requirement and a change request. Define where work is reviewed, who approves it, what evidence counts as complete and how defects found after launch are handled.

Upfront deposits, milestone payments and time-and-materials can all be reasonable. The useful question is whether you can see work progressing before too much money accumulates behind an assumption. Regular demos, staging releases and time reports make that visible.

Meet the technical or product lead, not just sales. Ask who owns architecture, who runs delivery, what happens when someone is unavailable and how often you will see working software.

Be careful with teams that promise exact dates before discovery, defend every line of scope as essential, avoid showing unfinished work, keep infrastructure in accounts you cannot access, or make handover sound like a favour. You are looking for a partner whose process remains understandable when things stop being easy.