Tender documents
such as Expression of Interest, Request for Proposal and Request for Tender together with
ancillary documents such as Statement of Work and Service Level Specification
Software and
Hardware Specification documents (including documents to Military Specification standard).
A
requirement sentence states what you want A Statement of Work
sentence states what you want done.
Each
requirement should be uniquely identified, it makes response assessment and follow-up
discussion considerably easier.
Each
requirement needs one or two scope sentences that define the bounds of the
requirement.
Each
requirement needs a separate Test Specification sentence stating what you will do to
verify the requirement has been delivered (yes, this applies to tender and
specification documents).
The Test
Specification provides the sanity check for the requirement if you cannot test
it, the requirement is wrong (one way or another).
Unless there
is a very good reason, neither a tender nor specification document should impose any
restriction or constraint on those who have to develop the deliverable solution. (This
facilitates producing the most cost-effective outcome.)
The clarity of the document, combined with the unique requirement identifier, results in easier to evaluate response documents and easier to verify deliverables. This makes the whole process more efficient, (quicker and less time dealing with ambiguities), which translates into significant cost savings.