What I ask when doing technical discovery

Much of my client work involves taking over an existing code base to fix what's wrong and add new features. Although I prefer having full control over the tools and methods I use, I also enjoy the work of finding what's slow and making it faster, simplifying what's complex, and removing what's redundant.

When evaluating whether to step into an existing project, my goal is to understand how it's built, and what parts of it are built well. Here's the list of questions I ask of clients and of the code when beginning a new project or client relationship.

Think of this list as a note-to-self made public. Some of these questions are redundant. My plan is to update this list as I think of new questions and work on different projects.

If you need someone to build a website, or walk you through the process of setting up a website, get in touch. Website begin at US$3,500.

General questions

Hosting environment things to check

WordPress projects

Front-end projects

React-specific questions

Does the project use authentication?

Does the project require authentication?

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