Ask a supplier for evidence

Start with your requirement

A supplier can demonstrate impressive output without answering your most important question. Define the requirement before the demonstration.

Consider a fictional company with confidential contract data. Its team needs AI-assisted maintenance of an existing application. The supplier shows a new application created from an empty repository. That result demonstrates a capability, but it does not test the company’s maintenance workflow.

Prepare a small representative repository with approved synthetic data. Include one existing convention, one failing test, and one change that needs a human decision. Give each supplier the same acceptance criteria.

Ask for behavior and evidence together

A statement such as “supports SSO” needs context. Ask which identity providers, account tiers, roles, and offboarding behaviors are included. Test the relevant access change.

For assurance reports or certifications, inspect their scope, covered service, review period, and exceptions. Do not assume a supplier’s assurance automatically covers the applications your team builds.

Observe a difficult case

Ask the supplier to show what happens when a required check fails. Then inspect the resulting artifact and decision path. A useful system makes incomplete work and missing evidence visible.

For the contract application, add a fictional request that crosses an access boundary. The evaluation should show how the system handles the requirement and how a reviewer verifies the result. Do not use real confidential data to make the demonstration more realistic.

Record differences between the demonstrated configuration and the proposed purchase. A promised future feature is a dependency, not a delivered capability.

Keep an evidence register

For each requirement, record the evidence link, date, configuration, reviewer, and conclusion. Use clear states: verified for this scenario, unresolved, or outside scope.

Assign an owner and deadline to unresolved items. Decide whether each item blocks the decision, requires a contractual condition, or can be accepted with a documented limitation.

Apply the same criteria to Taiga. Its public documentation and Trust Centre provide starting points. Confirm that the selected arrangement meets your requirements. Continue with exit and portability.