How to tell when your vendor is making the project more complicated than it needs to be
Signals that an executive can pick up early, before the project's problems become impossible to ignore.
One of the most common reasons people come to me sounds like this: "We have a vendor running a project, we are paying them, something is happening, but it feels like they are pulling us in a direction we did not pick."
That feeling is usually justified. And the early signs are concrete.
Signal 1. A simple question gets a complicated answer
If you ask "why is this report late?" and what you get back is a lecture about microservices, the data bus, and the importance of a clean architecture - that is not an explanation. That is an evasion.
A mature team can translate complex things into simple ones. If they cannot, either they do not really understand what they are building, or they benefit from you not understanding it either.
Signal 2. The scope is growing, but clarity is not
A project naturally grows: new requirements appear, hidden complexity surfaces, things have to be adjusted. That is fine.
What is not fine is the opposite: the project keeps getting bigger while the timeline and the picture of the result get blurrier. If every clarification makes things foggier instead of sharper, the vendor is not sure where they are heading.
Signal 3. Key decisions happen "off camera"
If you find out about the choice of database, framework, vendor, or architectural approach after the fact - that is not "speeding things up". It is moving you out of the customer seat.
A good partner explains the options, the trade-offs, and leaves the final call to the owner or the in-house technical lead. Especially for the decisions that will be expensive or painful to reverse later.
Signal 4. Technology is justified by fashion, not by the problem
The phrases:
- "everyone is doing it this way now";
- "this is the modern stack";
- "you will need this when you scale";
- "better to put it in now and not regret later".
Sometimes those are true. More often they are rationalised habit, or an attempt to inflate the bill.
The useful counter-question: "what do we lose if we do this in a simpler way?" If the answer is clear and concrete, listen. If the answer is foggy, pause.
Signal 5. Your in-house team is losing the thread
After three to six months of a project, an executive should still be able to answer simple questions:
- what are we building;
- how is it put together at a high level;
- what would happen if the vendor disappeared tomorrow;
- how much, and for what, are we paying.
If the answers come back as "well, it is complicated" - the project has migrated into someone else's accountability zone. That is the most expensive and most common pattern.
What to do
You do not have to fire the vendor. A simpler step usually helps: bring in a third party who looks at the project through the owner's eyes, translates the technical content into plain language, and points out the real risks.
This is not "catching the vendor in a mistake". This is reclaiming control over your own project.