Evaluating solutions#evaluating-solutions

Starting a trial account or reading the technical documentation are easy ways to learn more about a product, but scheduling a demo or speaking directly with a Solutions Engineer are likely the fastest ways to determine whether a particular tool is the right fit for your team.

These are some questions we often hear when potential customers are evaluating solutions.

Tooling requirements#tooling-requirements

• Does the solution support these important features?
  • Runbooks
  • Integrations
  • API access
  • Service catalog
  • Service ownership mapping
  • Communications
  • Analytics
  • Severity assignment
  • Change tracking
  • Retrospectives
  • Continuous learning

Technical process#technical-process

• How flexible is the platform?
• Can I manage my configuration as code?
• Can I fit my current process into this tool?
• What would I have to change about my processes?
  • What will I have to shut down?
  • How does this affect my existing resources - What does this to do researches specifically for- people, /time, and /money

Tech stack and integrations#tech-stack-and-integrations

• Does the solution integrate with my existing tooling? What integrations does the tool offer or plan to offer?
• Are the integrations robust? Are they supported by other vendors?
• What tools does this product replace? Do I need to buy or build anything else to ensure that the platform works?
• How can I confirm that I won't need to update this with multiple other tools?

Onboarding experience and customer success#onboarding-experience-and-customer-success

• How long will it take to get fully onboarded? Is there a self-serve option?
• Do we get/how often are check-ins?
• How does my team get support?

Measuring success#measuring-success

• How quickly would this solve our existing challenges?
• What metrics are important to my business, and would this solution provide the data I need?
  • Does the tool provide metrics, or do I have to extract them myself)?
• Does the solution provide best practices for responding to incidents, and will those best practices work for my organization?

Security#security

• What type of security does this platform include?
• Does it meet my organization’s security requirements?

Pricing#pricing

• How does the solution structure their pricing? Is the pricing fair?
• Who can use the platform? Who counts as a user vs. and observer (or does that matter in their pricing structure)?
• What’s included in the package? Are there add-ons I need to be aware of?
• How would it scale in my organization (specifically as the size of the engineering team grows)? Can it support that level of growth?

Future-proofing#future-proofing

• Will you solve problems that we don’t have yet, but may have in the future?
• Can I provide feedback on your product roadmap? Do you have CABs?
• How do I make feature requests, and how are those requests handled?