Prerequisites & Discovery Inputs
Have the following assets, repositories, and architectural context accessible before executing this evaluation:
- Access to platform source code repositories
- Overview of operational infrastructure and costs
- Third-party library dependency lists
Problem Statement
Acquirers, investors, and engineering leaders often struggle to assess the real quality, scalability, and liability of an inherited codebase. A superficial review can miss hidden technical debt, security issues, or architectural bottlenecks that will restrict future growth. This checklist provides a systematic audit framework to evaluate a platform's technical soundness.
When to Use
Use this checklist during mergers and acquisitions (M&A) processes, when onboarding a new vendor's code, or when performing a major platform audit prior to a strategic business restructure.
Step-by-Step Guide
Step 1: Organizational and License Audit
- Verify the ownership of all source code, assets, and documentation.
- Scan codebase dependencies for open-source license compliance (e.g., GPL restrictions vs MIT/Apache permissive licenses).
- Check that all development pipelines and cloud resources are owned by corporate accounts.
Step 2: Quality and Maintainability Assessment
- Review structural complexity metrics (e.g., cyclomatic complexity, component coupling, module size).
- Assess test suite coverage, runtimes, and build pass rates.
- Evaluate documentation depth (e.g., READMEs, setup guides, API specs).
Step 3: Infrastructure and Operational Scale
- Audit current cloud hosting architectures, network topologies, and single-point-of-failure (SPOF) risks.
- Review historical uptime records, incident history, and disaster recovery processes.
- Check scalability bounds (e.g., database read/write bottlenecks, caching hit ratios).
Checklist Items
- Repository has complete open-source license compliance reports with no licensing violations.
- Platform architecture documentation is up to date, covering all major modules and API integrations.
- No single person holds exclusive knowledge of the system (bus factor is mitigated).
- Critical infrastructure configurations are stored as Code (IaC) rather than configured manually.
- Active staging environment matches production configuration and data shape.
- Database backups are automated, encrypted, and regularly tested for restoration speed.
- Test coverage meets corporate standards with automated regression suites running in CI/CD.
- Codebase compiles on local developer systems in under 30 minutes with standardized onboarding.
Architectural Invariant · Production Hardening
Architecture specifications are only as sound as their verification in running production. In high-throughput systems, ensure every interface boundary maintains isolated timeout budgets, automated fallback circuits, and zero reliance on unmetered external dependencies.
Frequently Asked Questions
Practical insights on architecture executionWhat is the primary objective of technical due diligence?
To evaluate structural risks, technical debt, licensing liabilities, and scaling limits of a software platform prior to investment or strategic acquisition.