On the Rise: Tech Due Diligence

From bootstrapped startups to corporate boardroom tables, more and more people are asking questions like: Is our tech solid? Is our tech sound? Is our tech good enough to accomplish our development goals?

Nearly all industries have gone or are going digital, and nearly all industries are evolving around innovation–or at least they’re ripe for it. The subsequent arms race to find quality developers has led to greater risk and more confusion both at home and abroad, and as a result, people are more unsure than ever about what they’re really getting when they hire tech talent.

Enter tech due diligence.

What is tech due diligence?

Tech due diligence is a way to evaluate a given group’s technical capabilities and qualities necessary to build a digital product or software before a single new line of code is ever written. Performing tech due diligence follows a similar process to that of venture capitalists looking to acquire or invest in a company. In this case, the stakeholders are conducting a thorough examination of a development team and it’s environment to ensure both technical proficiency and overall compatibility. The result is a clear reduction to the risk of failure and a definitive pathway to successful collaboration.

So why is it needed now?

The fast-paced digital landscape has led to increases in both the demand and the supply of tech resources. The problem is, these increases pay absolutely no mind to quality, which means the market is flooded with noise and fragmentation. And this is only set to continue. The demand for reliable tech talent has reached fever pitch and it’s no longer restricted to just the bigger players like Google and Facebook as more and more industries are becoming fully reliant on IT and CS related staff members.

“Software developer jobs are expected to grow 17% from 2014 till 2024”.

– Forbes

Amid this growth, the recruiting struggle continues. This report from McKinsey highlights the hardships companies face to hire quality tech talent in a scramble to upskill their teams–and this is a trend set to escalate. However, it’s not just that. At the same time that more and more less-than-capable developers are offering their services to the market, the competent ones are also having trouble finding projects that are interesting and valuable themselves. As a result, good businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs are losing time, money, and effort by enduring rotten partnerships, meanwhile the truly great technical counterparts are struggling to differentiate themselves in the market full of lesser competition. What does this mean? It means that on both sides, the need for third-party verification is at an all-time high.

Is anyone doing it?

Well, Digital Knights is, for one.

Although there may be distinguished individuals performing tech due diligence on a for-hire and case-by-case basis, Digital Knights does it on a larger, more accessible scale. By reverse-engineering a ‘teams-first’ approach to test hundreds of boutique software development teams across the globe, Digital Knights has already put in the time and legwork that other companies don’t want to or simply can’t. As such, Digital Knights has established a quality assurance framework for digital innovation and software development in a world that has no real standardizations or regulations.

What’s Digital Knights?

The founders of Digital Knights experienced first-hand what being severely let down by tech partners felt like and decided that enough was enough–there was just too much failure in the digital innovation space. Today, the company is both a tech due diligence powerhouse and an exclusive gateway to its own network of trustworthy and gifted tech partners. On a rolling basis, businesses and entrepreneurs come to Digital Knights for connections to approved teams for on-demand collaboration in building digital products such as mobile apps, VR experiences, and IoT systems. The result is a data-driven alternative to the failure-ridden market standard of IT outsourcing that instead boasts a project success rate of 98 percent.

On the flip side, tech teams themselves seek out Digital Knights to undergo its strict due diligence methodology–a custom-built process put together in a combined effort with industry renowned CTOs, serial entrepreneurs, and tech due diligence experts with over 20 years of experience in vested outsourcing. After teams undergo the rigorous six-week test, not only do all receive a full report detailing team strengths and weaknesses across various technical and non-technical categories (no matter if they pass or fail), but they also receive instructions on how to remedy areas that are unsatisfactory ahead of a reassessment as well as how to improve their own abilities to attract potential clients. Only seven percent of teams at this time meet the standards to become Digital Knights approved on the first try.

“The due diligence process was important to us for two reasons. First, we got an independent and honest review of how we as a company are seen externally and how we rank in both the technical and communication areas. It boosted our confidence and provided actionable suggestions for improvements. Secondly, we view the Digital Knights network of approved teams as an emerging mark of quality within the custom software development market.”

– Adam Warski, CTO, SoftwareMill

What’s next?

Tech due diligence is still growing as an integral piece of the innovation puzzle. When done properly, it erases risks and modernizes decisions for top executives, CIOs and CTOs, non-technical founders, and product managers.

If you have a digital project coming up, get in touch with Digital Knights for a consultation to ensure you find the right team for your company.