I have watched a lot of software projects go wrong. Almost none of them failed because the code was bad.
They failed because of decisions made in the first two weeks, before anyone opened an editor. The scope was vague. The ownership was unclear. Nobody agreed on what "done" meant.
If you are about to hire a development agency, the contract is not where you protect yourself. The conversation before it is. Here are the seven questions I would ask.
- Find out exactly who will write your code, and whether they will change mid-project.
- Own everything from day one: code, repositories, servers and domain.
- Insist on working software you can click every week, not monthly reports.
- The best agencies tell you what not to build.
Who will actually write my code?
Many agencies sell you a senior team and staff a junior one. The people in the pitch meeting are often not the people on your project.
Ask directly: who is on this team, what is their experience, and will they change mid-project? A good agency will name names. A bad one will talk about "our resources."
You are not buying a company. You are buying a specific group of people for a specific number of months.
What happens when the scope changes?
It will change. Every project changes. The question is whether your agency has a process for it or just an invoice.
The honest answer sounds like this: small changes absorbed, larger changes quoted before work starts, nothing built without your written go-ahead.
Do I own the code?
This is the question people forget, and it is the most expensive one to get wrong.
Ask specifically: who owns the source code, who owns the repositories, who owns the servers and the domain, and what happens to all of it if we stop working together tomorrow.
You should own everything. Full repository access from day one, not on delivery. If an agency holds your code hostage as a retention strategy, you will find out at the worst possible moment.
How will I see progress?
Monthly status reports are a way of hiding problems for thirty days.
You want working software you can click on, every week. Not screenshots. Not a percentage. A link you can open.
This one question filters out more bad agencies than any other, because agencies that are behind cannot fake a weekly demo.
What is your plan for after launch?
Launch is not the end of a software project. It is the point where the real problems start appearing: the load you did not expect, the browser you did not test, the user behaviour nobody predicted.
Ask what happens in the first ninety days after launch. Ask what is included and what is billed. Ask how fast a critical bug gets fixed.
If nobody has thought about this, you are buying a demo, not a product.
Have you built something like this before?
Not "have you built an app". Everyone has built an app.
Have you built this kind of app, for this kind of business, at this kind of scale? A booking system and a marketplace both have users and payments, and they are not remotely the same problem.
Ask for a project close to yours. Ask what went wrong on it. An agency that cannot name a single problem on a past project is either inexperienced or not being straight with you.
What would you tell me not to build?
This is my favourite question, and almost nobody asks it.
Any agency will happily build whatever you describe. The good ones will tell you which parts are unnecessary, which parts should wait for version two, and which parts will cost far more than they are worth.
An agency that agrees with everything you say is not being agreeable. It is being expensive.
The pattern underneath all seven
Every one of these questions is really the same question: is this agency thinking about my business, or about their invoice?
The answers matter less than how they are given. Specific, direct answers, including uncomfortable ones, tell you far more than a polished deck.
You are not hiring people to write code. Code is the easy part now. You are hiring people to make hundreds of small decisions on your behalf over several months, most of which you will never see.
Hire accordingly.
Questions people ask
What should I ask a development agency before hiring?
Who will write the code, how scope changes are handled, who owns the code and infrastructure, how you will see progress, what happens after launch, whether they have built something similar, and what they would advise you not to build.
Should I own the source code of my app?
Yes. You should own the code, repositories, servers and domain, with full repository access from day one rather than on delivery.
How often should an agency show progress?
Every week, as working software you can open and click, not as screenshots or percentage reports.
Originally published in The Build Brief, our newsletter on LinkedIn. Read the original edition.
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