Associated Bag · SSR · JS Interactive

Pre-engagement questions

Information needed before a maintenance retainer and project allocation can be priced accurately.

Thank you for the detail you have already shared. Before we put numbers against a maintenance retainer and a project bucket, we would like to close out the unknowns so the quote we give you is one we can stand behind.

Where we cannot get an answer we have to price the uncertainty as risk, which makes our number higher than it needs to be and makes surprises more likely once work starts.

You will not have all of these answers yourself. Partial is genuinely useful, and there is a flag on each question for anything that belongs with HBS or the client's IT team. Your progress saves in this browser, so you can stop and come back.

Highlighted questions are the ones whose answers most directly affect the estimate.

1. Access and environments

1 What is the process and timeline for getting us read access, then write access, to the Azure DevOps repository? Who approves it?
2 Does the repo contain the complete site (theme, custom plugins, build tooling), or are some pieces deployed outside of source control?
3 Are there existing sandbox and staging environments, and are they on Kinsta alongside production? If so, are they current copies of production, including the pricing database?Priority
4 What level of Kinsta access will we have: full site, environment-level, or company-level? Can we create and destroy staging environments ourselves?
5 How does code currently reach production? Is there a pipeline from Azure DevOps, or is deployment manual?
6 Who else will hold write access to the repo and to production during and after the transition?
7 Who administers Cloudflare, and would we have access to cache rules, WAF settings and page rules? Several performance and incident scenarios depend on that.
8 Is there a documented rollback procedure, and has it been used?

2. The custom code

The abc- prefixed plugins currently represent the largest unknown in the engagement.

9 Can we get read access to the actual source of the abc- prefixed plugins, rather than only HBS's written description? We are happy to sign whatever NDA the client requires. Reading the code is the single fastest way to shrink our estimate.Priority
10 Who originally wrote the custom plugin, TRG or HBS, and is that person still reachable for questions?
11 Does the plugin handle checkout, cart or payment logic, or is it limited to catalog, search and navigation? That distinction changes the risk profile substantially.Priority
12 Are there automated tests of any kind, or is all verification manual?
13 Are there other customizations beyond the plugin: changes in the astra-child theme, must-use plugins, wp-config constants, or server-level configuration?Priority
14 When HBS's documentation is finished, will we be able to ask follow-up questions of the author, or is the document the end of the handover?

3. The ERP and pricing integration

Per-customer pricing is the revenue-critical path and is invisible from outside the system.

15 How is the pricing database on Kinsta populated from Workwise? A scheduled job, a file drop, a direct database connection, or something else?Priority
16 What runs the sync, and where does it run: on the Kinsta server, on a machine at Associated Bag, or inside Workwise?Priority
17 What is the schedule, and is the refresh a full replace or an incremental update?
18 What happens today when a sync fails or runs partially? Is anyone alerted, and does the site fall back to list pricing or show nothing?Priority
19 Has a sync failure happened since launch, and what was the customer-visible effect?
20 Is there any API contract, schema documentation, or field mapping between Workwise and the pricing database?
21 Who owns the Workwise side: an internal IT resource, a Workwise partner, or a consultant? Can we talk to them directly?Priority
22 How large is the pricing dataset, roughly: number of customers, SKUs and rows?
23 Is the pricing database a separate MySQL database on the same Kinsta instance, sharing resources with WordPress, or hosted separately?
24 Is the daily refresh cadence a business requirement or an inherited assumption? You noted tariff volatility may have driven it, and it would help to know whether the client considers it settled.

4. Transition from HBS

25 What is the expected end date for HBS's engagement, and is there a planned overlap where both teams have access?Priority
26 What handover artifacts are committed: the custom-plugin documentation, and anything else such as architecture notes, a credentials inventory, or a runbook?
27 Will HBS retain write access to the repo or production after handover, and if so for how long?Priority
28 Who owns open bugs at the point of handover? Specifically, are there known defects HBS is expected to fix before leaving, and is there a list?
29 Is there a ticket or issue history we can inherit, and does it live in Azure DevOps or somewhere else?
30 Is there anything HBS built that is licensed to them rather than to the client?

5. Scope: maintenance versus projects

Genuine maintenance on a stable store is small and predictable. Most of what has been described so far is project work. Pricing the two as one thing means somebody absorbs the difference.

31 Can we agree a written definition of what the maintenance retainer covers? Our working proposal: core, plugin and theme updates on the sandbox to staging to production path; security patching; uptime and error monitoring; and small fixes under an agreed time threshold.Priority
32 On your "maintenance and performance" framing, would unused maintenance hours roll into performance work in the same month, and would that work be planned in advance or picked up ad hoc?
33 Does anything about the product catalog fall to us: product adds, imports or content changes? The client's marketing team appears to own catalog content, and we want to confirm that.
34 For the roughly 80-item backlog, will each item be quoted individually, or would you prefer a fixed monthly project allocation with priorities set at the start of each sprint or quarter?Priority
35 Who approves a project estimate before work starts: you, the VP, or both?
36 What is the escalation path and expected response time for something urgent, for example checkout failing on a weekday afternoon?
37 Is the client expecting after-hours or weekend availability, and if so, has that been priced into their expectations?

6. Operational

38 What backups exist beyond Kinsta's defaults, and does the backup cover the separate pricing database as well as WordPress?
39 Has a restore ever been tested?
40 What monitoring is in place today: uptime, application errors, real-user performance, transaction failures? Does anyone receive alerts?
41 What incidents have occurred since the July 4 launch, and how were they resolved?
42 On the load test that broke the database at 500 concurrent add-to-cart requests, is the report or output available? Was anything changed afterwards, or does the fragility remain?
43 What is realistic peak concurrency for this business, and does the site see seasonal or campaign-driven spikes?
44 What are current uptime and error rates, if anything is measuring them?
45 How is PCI handled? Braintree and PayPal suggest card data stays off-site, but we want to confirm that no card data touches the server, and understand what compliance obligations the client believes it carries.
46 Are there other integrations we have not discussed: tax calculation, shipping rates, EDI, accounting or CRM?

7. Search

47 Can you confirm whether Algolia is actually in use? We fingerprinted the homepage and found no Algolia. It may be present only on search and category pages, or the search may be a custom implementation, possibly the custom-search-dropdown component we found.
48 If Algolia is in use, who owns the account and pays for it, and how is the index built and refreshed?
49 If it is custom, is the search index derived from the WooCommerce database directly, or from a separate store?
50 Is the search overhaul expected to change the underlying search technology, or to improve relevance and filtering on whatever is already there?

8. Business context

These shape the SLA and the deployment calendar rather than the development estimate.

51 What is the confirmed annual revenue through the site? You mentioned a couple of million and offered to get the exact number.
52 What are the peak periods, by season, by week and by time of day? These determine when we can safely deploy.
53 What is the approximate revenue impact of an hour of downtime? That number should drive how much monitoring and redundancy is worth building.
54 Does SSR have an SLA with Associated Bag that we would need to support? If so, what does it commit to on response and resolution times?
55 Is there a change-freeze window the client observes, for example around a major promotion or year-end?
56 Who at Associated Bag tests and signs off on changes in staging, and what is their realistic turnaround?

9. Anything else