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Checkliste · Platform strategy

The Platform Discovery Checklist

The questions to answer before you build or buy an enterprise platform capability — scope, constraints, integration depth, and coverage — in the order a discovery works through them.

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The most expensive platform decisions get made before anyone writes a line of code — or signs a contract.

Five steps, twelve questions — ending on the build-buy-partner call instead of starting there.

Discovery steps
5
Boxes to tick
12
Answers stay in your browser
100%

So funktioniert es

  1. Von oben nach unten arbeiten

    Jedes Kästchen ist eine echte Voraussetzung — ein offenes ist die Arbeit, kein Versäumnis.

  2. Ihre Haken bleiben bei Ihnen

    Der Fortschritt wird nur in diesem Browser gespeichert — kein Konto, nichts einzureichen.

  3. Mit in die Entscheidung nehmen

    Laden Sie das PDF herunter und bringen Sie dieselben Punkte in das Meeting, in dem die Entscheidung tatsächlich fällt.

Auf einen Blick

Format
Checkliste
Thema
Platform strategy
Veröffentlicht
Lesezeit
3 Min. Lesezeit
PlatformDiscoveryBuild vs Buy

A discovery phase isn't overhead; it's risk reduction. This checklist is the order a good discovery works through.

Work top to bottom. Don't skip to vendor demos — that's step five, not step one. Your ticks stay in your browser, so you can work through it across a week of stakeholder conversations.

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Tick each question once you have a written answer:

For every workflow the capability must support, mark whether a candidate solution handles it:

  • Natively — works out of the box.
  • By configuration — supported, needs setup.
  • By custom code — possible, but it's now your code to maintain.
  • Not at all — a hard blocker hiding inside a feature list.

The "custom code" and "not at all" rows are where timelines and budgets actually go.

Integration is rarely the demo's strong suit. For each system you must connect to, ask:

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Read access is a screenshot. Write, trigger, and role-aware access is a product.

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These aren't mutually exclusive, and they're not permanent:

  • Buy the non-differentiating parts — the things a vendor does better than you ever will.
  • Build the part that is your differentiation, the thing the business is actually paying you for.
  • Partner to validate a concept fast, then bring it in-house once it's proven.

Write the decision down with the reasoning. In eighteen months someone will ask why, and "it seemed right at the time" is not an answer. For the full six-question version of this call, run the Build, Buy, or Partner decision check — it's linked at the end of this page.

A discovery done well makes the build boring — which is the goal. If you're at the start of one and the stakeholders already disagree about the problem, that's the moment a neutral facilitator pays for itself.

Zum Mitnehmen

Das einseitige PDF, bereit zum internen Weiterleiten.

Das Gespräch danach

Dreißig Minuten, ohne Foliensatz. Bringen Sie mit, was Sie gerade beantwortet haben, und wir klären, was das für Ihre Plattform bedeutet.

Besprechen, was das für Ihre Plattform bedeutet

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