Overseeing the progress

Assuming your project is already in development, being on the same page as the technological founder will allow you to understand when certain actions or intervention are needed.

While the project is being development, the other areas need to be in the same page in whichever activities they must conclude before the project is delivered by the development team. Focusing on non-technological only areas or too much on trying to understand the technicalities of the project may result in a blindspot. It is probable that your non-technological partner has presented to you a development plan containing sprints that will contain a timeline to follow.

How to oversee technicalities?

It is challenging to oversee technicalities in the project due to knowledge barrier.
If one maintains theirself informed since the beginning of the project, asking about how sprints are going and what are the next steps are probably the best thing to do.

Some project managers that work with the technological partners also do not know how to code. Even though they are in the technological industry, all they got familiar with to be able to conduct a project was with scrum and agile methodology. If a non-technological founder has some spare time, it would be very beneficial for one to read and understand the methodology.

One won't be able to tell if one thing was done correctly or not. The question in order here should be what is wrong whether than why is it wrong. When understanding what is wrong, the non-technological party will be able to estimate by how much the project will delay. If the question why is it wrong seems to have a need for response, seeking a consultant is probably a good idea.

By outsourcing a consultant, (s)he'll be able to evaluate the current progress and judge if the develpers are taking longer than they should or why is the project stagnated.

Pull the Plug if needed

If things were not planned accordingly, or if they were poorly excecuted, knowing when to pull the plug on the project is important as a trial of minimizing costs.

Unfortunately, like in every other business, sometimes the technological party promised something they couldn't deliver in order to win the contract. Whether it is a team of developers that weren't ready to build what you agreed upon or a software development company that promised a quicker or cheaper delivery.

Cutting a bad partner by the roots at the right time will still give you an opportunity to invest the rest of the money onto someone else. In case this happens to you, there is no need to feel dismotivated, as it happens to some projects. Bare in mind that, unlike other factors mentioned on this series of articles, this is not dependent on the project itself. Even though journeys are taken differently in given projects, this is solely dependent on the technological partner. If they have had turnover projects before, don't feel singled out if this happens to you.