The most common mistakes in a technology due diligence

The first mistake, on the seller's side, is starting too late: gathering technical documentation, clarifying code ownership, and organizing interviews with the teams in just a few days, under the pressure of the deal timeline, rarely produces a convincing file. Upfront preparation, even a basic one, radically changes the buyer's perception.

On the buyer's side, the most common mistake is focusing solely on code and architecture while neglecting organizational technical debt: dependency on a handful of key developers, lack of documentation, a manual and non-reproducible deployment process. These risks often weigh more heavily on medium-term valuation than a questionable technology choice.

Software quality, security, and vendor compliance are three other classic blind spots. An audit limited to an interview with the CTO misses signals that only a structured review, cross-referencing answers with documents (contracts, architecture diagrams, security scan results), can surface.

Finally, a technology due diligence benefits from being made objective through a framework shared by both parties: the same domains assessed, the same questions, the same risk scale. This avoids debates over perception and refocuses the negotiation on factual, sourced findings.