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https://github.com/altunyurt/technical_due_diligence

Curated list of technical due diligence questions
https://github.com/altunyurt/technical_due_diligence

due-diligence questions

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Curated list of technical due diligence questions

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README 

        
**Curated List of Technical Due Diligence Questions**



Technical due diligence process is used to capture a snapshot to develop

a thorough understanding of the technological state of a business to be

able to make accurate and effective valuations for fundraising and

investment rounds.



In this list, you will find a series of questions that range from human

resources to disaster recovery where each one addresses a specific

aspect of what makes a technology company. The way how handled with

these topics is what makes a company unique in its own way.



To get the most out of this document, put your best effort into

answering as honestly and openly as possible* *all the questions that

apply to your business. In any case, you will gain a different

perspective over the current state of your business.\

\

For a professional follow-up evaluation report on your answers or for

further technical auditing services please contact me.



**Business**



-   Briefly introduce your company.

-   Briefly introduce yourself. What's your role in the company?

-   Which industry is your business in?

-   Which phase of funding are you in right now?

-   Who are your direct competitors with similar products?

-   Do you have domestic/foreign patents/utility models/licenses of the technology / IP you have created?

-   How compliant is your business with regional laws such as GDPR / KVKK technology wise?



**Product / Service**



-   Briefly describe the product. What does it do and what problems does it solve?

-   What is your target market?

-   How far ahead do you have your product roadmap written down?

-   How do you do the planning? What do you take into consideration? Who else contributes to the process?

-   Have you or someone from your team built a similar product in the past? What was it?

-   Do you or your team use your product regularly?

-   How do you collect user/ customer feedback about the product? How do you utilize all the feedback?

-   Are there any customized versions of your product deployed to some clients that are billed separately from the standard payment methods?



**Team / Hiring / Human resources**



-   How many people are there in your team? How many have shares in the company?

-   Briefly explain existing roles and their responsibilities in your team.

-   Who are the team key players? Briefly explain.

-   How many of them worked for / with you (elsewhere) in the past?

-   Is the person who wrote the initial version still one of the main developers?

-   How often do you do one-on-ones with your team?

-   How does the team communicate and make decisions?

-   How do you do the onboarding of new team members? How long does it take for a new member to get into actual coding?

-   How do you make sure that the whole team is on the same page?

-   What are the values of your engineering organization? Do all your team share those values?

-   Do you have a list of missing roles / talent in your organization?

-   How do you find and attract new talents?

-   How does your interview process work? Who else contribute to the process? Who decides on the hiring?

-   What is your career development plan for your team members?

-   Last year, how many people have left and how many have joined? What was the main reason for them to leave?

-   How do you keep the talent from leaving? How do you keep your team motivated?

-   Do you have a list of possible contractors / service providers / former team members at hand if immediate need rises?

-   How would you improve the development team?

-   How would you improve the hiring process?



**Technology / Code**



-   How do you keep yourself and your team up to date with the latest technologies?

-   What technologies (frameworks/languages) do you use for the product? How do you decide on them?

-   What are the new technology transformations you are planning?

-   Has all the software been coded in the house? How do you choose build vs buy?

-   How well is your code documented?

-   How well is your product documented?

-   How much are you aware of your code's dependencies? What happens if for some reason a dependency is not accessible anymore?

-   Do you have anything hardcoded in the code? How do you show certain features to a limited number of users?

-   What development methodology do you use? Briefly explain.

-   How do you keep a consistent coding style? Briefly explain.

-   How do you keep a consistent development / release environment across all involved systems, including developers’?

-   How do you evaluate your code's quality?

-   How much of your code is reusable?

-   How do you use bug / issue trackers?

-   How many open issues/defects are there? How old is the oldest? How many of them did you close last month?

-   How do you use source / version control?

-   How do you do code reviews?

-   How do you test your code? How much of your code is covered?

-   How do you test your product?

-   How much technical debt do you have? What is your pay back strategy?

-   What do you optimize for?

-   How often do you ship new releases of your product? What is your releasing strategy?

-   How do you deliver new releases? Briefly explain your integration and delivery process.

-   How accurate is your release timelines? Briefly explain the reasons.

-   How often do you find yourself shipping products with known bugs?

-   How do you deploy new releases? Briefly explain your deployment process.

-   How often do you find yourself carrying out manual tasks on servers? Briefly explain.

-   What happens when a deployment task fails?

-   Does the software automatically notify you of errors?

-   How do you measure the effects / outcomes of each new release?

-   How would you improve the development processes?

-   How would you improve the deployment processes?



**Architecture and Infrastructure**



-   How much of your architecture and infrastructure is documented?

-   How many vendors (AWS, Azure, etc) is your service/ product scattered across? Briefly explain.

-   Which 3rd party systems (payment, invoicing, others) do you use? Briefly explain.

-   How dependent are you to a specific vendor? What happens if they go down / halt operations?

-   What are the possible bottlenecks of your architecture? What keeps you awake at night?

-   How do you measure the current max capacity of the system?

-   Do you know how much it can support? How close are you to the limits right now?

-   Are you able to easily scale up / down your infrastructure on a few clicks?

-   What metrics do you use to determine if you are not scaled appropriately?

-   What aspects of the system do you think might not scale well?

-   Are you able to easily shift your services to other locations / providers? Briefly explain.

-   What isn't automated that should be?

-   Are there any single points of failure? Briefly explain.

-   What would you have to change to accommodate x10, x100, x1000 more users?

-   How would you improve maintainability?



**Security, Continuity, Monitoring**



-   What are you monitoring? Briefly explain.

-   Which monitoring tools are you using?

-   How do you measure usage/user statistics?

-   How do you measure the value of users?

-   Are there any parts in the system that are understood by only one person?

-   What requires admin privileges? Who has it?

-   What kind of security measures are taken against standard stuff like SQL injection, XSS, etc?

-   In the case of a security breach, how much data/business would be at risk?

-   Have you ever had a data breach? What do you think the reason was?

-   How do you test your product security wise?

-   How would you know if any kind of security breach happens?

-   How would you make the system more secure?

-   What's your backup strategy? Briefly explain.

-   Would a DDoS attack put you out of business? Briefly explain.

-   Do you have an IT Disaster Recovery Plan? Briefly explain

-   Do you have a Business Continuity Plan? Briefly explain



**Budgeting**



-   What is the technology team budget (ie. %x of total annual) and how is it allocated?

-   Are the allocations always used as planned? Briefly explain.