Five Questions to Ask Before You Sign an Automation SOW
Author: Karl Koenigsberger, Sales Director, IRIS Factory Automation
The plants that get the most out of an automation investment aren't the ones with the biggest budgets. They're the ones who knew what to ask before anything was signed.
Most projects don't fail at kickoff. They fail months in, when a small addition or a "can we also" request turns into a new project running on the old budget and the old timeline. By then, it's not just your budget on the line. It's the promise you made to the people counting on that line running on schedule, whether that's a customer waiting on their order or your own leadership counting on numbers you gave them.
The teams who avoid this aren't lucky. They asked a few pointed questions early and made sure the answers were in writing before work started.
Here are five questions worth asking any automation partner, including us.
What happens the moment a request falls outside scope? The sharper question isn't what's included in the SOW. It's what your partner's process looks like the instant something isn't. Is there a defined path for a change request, or does it get absorbed quietly until it's too big to manage without a real conversation? A partner who can answer this in one sentence has done this before. One who can't hasn't thought it through yet either.
Who has the authority to approve a change once we're underway? Requests on the plant floor often come from someone other than the person who signed the SOW: a line lead, a quality manager, a plant manager visiting from another site. That's normal. What matters is whether your partner already knows who can say yes to a change and who can't, so a well-meaning conversation on the floor doesn't rewrite your project.
How will we tell a small addition from scope creep? Not every request is scope creep. Some are legitimate fixes to something the original spec missed. What matters isn't whether you can make that call yourself. It's whether your partner will draw the line honestly, in real time, instead of letting a gray area slide because it's easier to keep moving. Ask how they tell the difference. If the answer is vague, that's your answer too.
What parts of the timeline are fixed, and what parts flex if requirements change? A partner who can point to what's locked and what's flexible has built a real plan. One who can't has built a guess. Knowing the difference before you're three months in is what lets you make good decisions instead of just reacting to them.
When something's ambiguous, does your partner pause to clarify or keep moving? This is the one that predicts the whole project. A partner who pauses to get it right looks a little slower in week two and finishes ahead in month four. A partner who keeps moving through ambiguity looks fast at first and costs you later, and that cost lands on the commitments you've already made to the people downstream of you.
It's how we'd want a customer to vet us. At IRIS, locking scope early and being upfront about what triggers a change isn't a policy we point to. It's how we've protected customer timelines and budgets through installations for years, so the commitments you've made never take the hit. Ask these five questions of any partner you're considering. The right answers should be easy for them to give.
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