While writing my last post about Netlify, it occurred to me that while it was beneficial to know what it was at a high level for my own educational purposes, I did not really think about the technology as part of a solution specific to a project or organization.
That led to my thoughts about what questions I would ask when assessing a new technology.
- What key business problem (s) will this technology solve?
- What is the initial cost of the technology?
- What is the ongoing cost (monthy/annually)
- What is the total cost of ownership?
- What is the cost of switching to another solution?
- What costs are we saving with this technology?
- Is the technology 10x cheaper or free relative to other solutions?
- What competitors exist in the market? (Ask some of these questions for each competitor as well)
- Is there a good reason for switching?
- Does this technology enhance the company’s offering? How?
- Does the technology improve time to market? (Both in the initial use and with updates or feature improvement)?
- What does the technology do well?
- What are appropriate use cases for the technology?
- When is the technology not the right solution?
- In what ways will the technology improve customer experience?
- Will it hinder customer experience?
- Does the technology help developer experience, or internal user experience at the expense of customers?
- How mature is the technology? Is it changing quickly?
- Is there a foreseeable road map for the technology?
- What risk factors might affect the ongoing development of the technology?
- How does the technology help developer experience?
- How does the technology fit into the development pipeline?
- How well does it integrate with what we’re already doing?
- What is the onboarding cost for the development team for this?
- How is the documentation for the technology?
- Are there courses/training available?
- Does the team buy into it?
- What are the DevOps requirements to implementing the technology?
- Is this technology scalable?
- Are them other tools or libraries that need to also be included?
- How will we measure success of deploying this technology?
- What other questions will senior management ask about the technology?
What other questions do you ask when assessing technologies?