A buyer's guide to selecting the right software delivery partner

Selecting a new delivery partner is not a simple task. So many variables go into the decision that finding someone who can tick every box without compromising what matters most to you (price, capability, quality, culture, attitude, accountability, …) is extremely challenging.

It’s an expensive commitment and a potentially risky one. And not something many can afford to get wrong. However, there are things you can do to help you arrive at the right decision. The main ones being:

• Objectives – are you clear on what you’re trying to achieve?

• Competency – what level of expertise are you after?

• Research – can your supplier deliver on its promises?

• Alignment – what does success look like for everyone?

• Price – is it worth it?

1. Objectives – what are you trying to achieve?

First off, why are you seeking outside help?

• Seeking to increase capacity temporarily? Do you need to increase engineering headcount or fill a specialist skills gap for a short period? You are looking for experienced hands that can land with minimal fuss, augment existing teams, and deliver value from day one. You are likely unwilling to accept ‘junior’ talent, even if they are paired with senior people – maybe the timeframes don’t allow for the ramp up, or perhaps the need is so specialised, a junior simply won’t do. And anyway, why should you be paying for someone to learn at your expense?

• Seeking to outsource an outcome? Do you need a team to own the delivery of a defined feature (e.g. a mobile application), possibly as part of a larger in-house team or a separate ring-fenced project? Perhaps you don’t have the necessary skills in-house, or maybe it’s low-value work that will demotivate your people – either way, you are seeking a team with the ability to deliver features with minimal risk. You are potentially more willing to accept a balanced team of seniors and juniors.

• Seeking to outsource an entire delivery? Do you need a partner to lead the delivery of an entire platform or product? Ideally, you are looking for a partner that understands your domain, has the in-house capability to deliver your desired outcomes, is large enough to underwrite the risk, can bring your people on the journey, and is set up to collaborate with your teams. Your reasons for handing an entire delivery over to a third party will range from a lack of in-house capability to a lack of capacity. Where you sit on this spectrum will be reflected in how the engagement is structured.

• Seeking to improve your delivery culture? Do you need a partner that can help modernise your development practices, improve core disciplines, or even reset your delivery culture? You’ve been hired to help deliver product, but have inherited an immature, dysfunctional engineering function that needs to see what good looks like. Sometimes it’s just easier to seed the change you seek with external people who can bring about that change quickly.

• Seeking to digitally transform how you work? Are you pursuing large-scale organisational change and need a partner who can act as both catalyst and guide? That change could come within, but working with an external management consultancy should circumvent internal inertia and help accelerate outcomes. Your partner will not only deliver software; they will lead the entire transformation journey. This is not necessarily ‘Big 4’ territory, but they will be better suited for scale – at a price.

Not all engagements will fall neatly into these categories. There are at least fifty shades of (delivery) grey, mostly variations on a theme or a blend of several. For example, you might want to outsource a feature, but still need your own people involved to build domain expertise and ensure a smoother handover later. Or sometimes a simple resource ask can morph into a much deeper, prolonged arrangement over time.

The point is that software delivery engagements are not one-size-fits-all. Some models suit certain suppliers better than others. An agency geared towards providing short-term contractors may not be the best choice for owning a full delivery outcome. Equally, not every delivery partner will be comfortable placing individuals on long-term client projects where they’re isolated from their own teams.

As a buyer, it’s important to recognise these challenges. An engagement that puts pressure on a supplier’s culture may ultimately disappoint you, so it’s vital to choose a partner whose setup and operating model align with how you want to work.

2. Competency – what level of expertise are you after?

Not all suppliers are created equal, and not every project demands the same level of expertise. When setting out your goals, also be clear about the level of expertise you need.

A team of highly experienced developers capable of dialling up your engineering culture is a completely different proposition from a team focused on repetitive, menial work. Horses for courses - misaligned expectations at the beginning will result in friction and unhappiness later, on both sides.

Expertise and experience are often tied to price. The more niche and specialised a request, the more you’re likely to pay. Conversely, repetitive work should typically demand less of a premium. Still, it’s worth noting that even with ‘commodity’ skills, there are layers of capability – especially in the age of AI.

Be clear on the minimum standards you expect - the non-negotiables that define how you expect to work together. These should include both the obvious hard skills (competency, expertise) and the less obvious soft skills (accountability, ownership, integrity).

3. Research – can your partner deliver on their promises?

This might seem obvious, but running research on a prospective supplier is not something every buyer does. It goes well beyond taking some website testimonials as gospel. You need to verify:

• References. How did you first hear about them? Was it through a referral or a cold approach? Have you spoken with their customers, both past and present? What did they say? This is the only way to confirm that a supplier is who they claim to be – and to find out their true strengths and weaknesses. Once you scratch below the polished veneer of their sales team, how good are they really?

• Track record. Have they been successful before? Do they have a record of delivery in your domain or technology stack? What does their overall body of work look like? Again, speak to their customers – did they deliver what they promised, and did the results match the impact they claimed? You need to separate fact from fiction.

• Culture. What do their employees say about them? Do staff reviews reflect the culture they promote externally? References are helpful, but insights from their own people will tell you far more about where a company’s true values lie. A few outliers are normal, but does the overall sentiment align with their stated culture? Do they genuinely live and breathe software engineering and delivery excellence every day?

• Expertise. How well do their insights and thought leadership align with your challenges and worldview? Does their thinking challenge yours or add something new? Are they active in industry events and conferences? Does the depth of their content reflect the expertise you need? You can learn a lot about a company’s real capabilities from what they produce outside their day-to-day client work.

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4. Alignment – what does mutual success look like?

Clearly, the main purpose of any engagement is to help buyers meet their business objectives and deliver meaningful impact for your stakeholders. Any decent supplier will share this goal. It’s why they exist – to deliver extraordinary impact.

But it's useful to note that suppliers have their own (often similar) business objectives. They also care about growth, their people and their culture. A misfitting engagement can have similar knock-on consequences for them also, reputationally, financially and culturally. Success for suppliers is typically built on:

• Long-term relationships over short-term projects

• Shared values and culture

• Stable, autonomous teams with agency

• Blended, diverse teams

• Partnership, not transactional relationships

Long-term relationships over short-term projects

Winning new business in the world of services is tough. It takes time to establish relationships and build trust – months or even years. Most of their growth tends to be through existing relationships rather than new logo acquisition.

Flitting between short-term projects rarely works well for them – it is not good for morale, confidence or the bottom line. They prefer clients who are in it for the long haul and who value relationships that allow them to deliver impact and plan for growth.

Equally, an engagement that treats the supplier as a resource tap, something that can be turned on and off repeatedly, with little consequence, can leave people feeling detached and disheartened. (Although sometimes, this is just the way it has to be, which is why suppliers will occasionally throw trusted third-party contractors rather than full-time employees at this kind of work, knowing they are better suited to on-again / off-again projects.)

Shared values and culture

You will have concerns beyond bringing potentially sizeable numbers of new people onto a project. Most notably, will they damage the culture you’ve worked so hard to build?

It’s a fair concern. However, this cuts both ways. The best suppliers care deeply about their engineering and delivery cultures. Their ideal is to work with organisations that share their values on modern engineering best practices and continuous delivery.

The reality is that there is often work to be done on this front. But as long as there is a willingness to improve, culture misalignment can be tackled head-on, with a degree of excitement. There’s nothing like leaving an organisation in a better place. Equally, inertia to change only leads to frustration.

An aligned culture is not an “us versus them” or discrete teams working in isolation. It is built on a shared sense of purpose, with everyone pulling in the same direction, operating as a single team. A good partner will mirror your culture; a great one will strengthen it.

Stable, autonomous teams

Suppliers care about team cohesion just as much as you do. Their engineers want to work in stable, collaborative groups with similarly minded people who also value the highest standards. Cultural misalignment can cause the same friction and attrition in their teams that you fear in yours.

Blended, diverse teams

Good suppliers invest heavily in developing their people from early career onwards. They train them rigorously and mentor them into capable engineers before deploying them.

For suppliers, sustainable delivery is built on blended teams – a balance of senior, mid-level and junior engineers working together. A supplier that sends all its senior engineers to one client weakens its internal leadership and leaves younger staff without opportunities to learn.

Including well-supported junior engineers alongside experienced professionals builds capability and helps the supplier grow the next generation of talent – something that ultimately benefits both sides.

Partnerships, not transactional relationships

The healthiest relationships are partnerships, not service contracts. Ideal customers share accountability for outcomes, welcome constructive feedback, and value quality over speed or cost. Suppliers don’t want one-way, bums-on-seats relationships where they simply do as they are told; they want to collaborate with clients who care about continuous improvement, delivery excellence, and affecting lasting impact.

5. Price – is it worth it?

Price will, of course, always be a factor, but if it’s the only factor (or even the major factor), then don’t be surprised when the wheels eventually come off. A race to the bottom on day rates will only mean one thing: compromising on what matters – quality, people, maturity, experience, culture, etc.

No matter what pricing model you use – time and materials, fixed-price or outcomes-based (to pick three) – you need to recognise that not every pound spent will deliver the same return across different suppliers.

• People are not interchangeable: No two people are the same, yet we often assign a fixed value to each role as if two individuals at the same level will always produce the same output or impact. While you might expect some consistency between two principal engineers within the same organisation, capability can vary dramatically across organisations — even for people with identical titles.

• Teams create more value than individuals: In time-and-materials contracts, it’s easy to obsess over individual day rates. But software delivery is rarely about individual brilliance - it’s about collective performance. The best suppliers invest serious effort in assembling the right mix of people; they don’t simply throw whoever’s available at a problem. A well-composed team will always deliver more than the sum of its parts. Value should therefore not be judged on the cost of its parts, but on how the team performs together.

• Beware false economies: How do you define value – speed, cost, market share? But at what point does cheap become expensive? The consequences of poor workmanship can quickly erase any perceived savings. The reputational damage caused by a security vulnerability or the cost of an operational failure as a result of a nefarious defect will far outweigh modest savings on day rates.

Clearly, price matters, but it’s never the full story. Ultimately, the real value lies in the people, the culture and the impact a supplier can deliver today, and the costs they save you in the long run. The best suppliers' rates reflect the investment they make in training, mentoring, tooling, and supporting their people. The right partner won’t necessarily be the cheapest, but they will deliver sustainable value, protect your reputation and strengthen your delivery capability over time.

Final thoughts – making it work

Ultimately, your choice will come down to a simple question: Do you want to work with this organisation?

It’s not entirely a gut call, but trust your instincts on this. The clearer you are on what you are trying to achieve, on the minimum standards you expect, on what you’re not willing to compromise, and on what an aligned culture looks like, the more likely you are to find a partner who can help you achieve your goals.

Finally, rather than going all in, ease into the relationship. Start with a small team. If they excel, only then ramp up your investment. Do your due diligence, but mitigate the risk until you know you've got a partner that you can truly trust. It won't take long - you'll know within a few weeks whether they are the real deal or not.