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The Statement of Work (SOW) is a document, which describes the scope of work required to complete a specific project. It is a formal document and must be agreed upon by all parties involved.
In order to be effective, the SOW must contain an appropriate level of detail so all parties clearly understand what work is required, the duration of the work involved, what the deliverables are, and what is acceptable. Writing a good Statement of Work. What goes into a good SOW (Statement of Work)? In this post there is a basic outline of the structure of a good SOW. In addition there are some real world examples and templates that you can use right away of SOWs that you can use for either a project or consulting engagement
Basic structure
• Reference information (client name etc) • Scope of the project or piece of work, linking back to the customer’s business objective • Work to be done or work packages • What that is not in scope • Assumptions • Dependencies • Exclusions • Commercials • Acceptance • Terms and conditions Get these included in the SOW and you have a solid foundation for a good commercial engagement and then the delivery teams can get on with execution and the account management team does not have to spend all of their time checking what was in the contract or SOW. Example #1 : Table of contents template for an ICT Project Below is a detailed example of a table of contents that could be used to structure a statement of work for an ICT project. • Executive Summary Overview • Agreement Term • Definitions • Solution Overview • Other Non-Functional aspects of the Solution • Delivery Approach • Planning • Delivery and installation of Software. • Lab and Production Environment Install and Configuration • Testing • Project Deliverables • Commercial Proposal • Assumptions • Exclusion • Customer Responsibilities • Project Management • Project Escalation Path • Communications management. • Project Schedule • Acceptance • Schedule • Pricing - Fixed Price Services. • Pricing – Payment Milestone • Warranty Example #2: Table of contents template for a Consulting project 1. SOW for XXX Project 1.1. RELATED DOCUMENTS 2. TERM AND TERMINATION 3. DELIVERABLES 3.1. Background/Context 3.2. Deliverables & Activities 3.3. Professional Services 3.4. Out of Scope Deliverables 3.5. Warranty Period 4. DOCUMENTATION 5. CUSTOMER REQUIREMENTs 6. Assumptions and dependencies 6.1. Assumptions 6.2. Dependencies 7. ACCEPTANCE TEST PLAN 8. License Term 9. Project Management Services 9.1. Project Managers 9.2. Steering committee 9.3. Project team 9.4. Other resources 9.5. Key positions 9.6. Project management methodologies 9.7. Reporting 9.8. Meetings 9.9. Escalation 10. CONTRACT MILESTONES 10.1. Contract Milestone descriptions 10.2. Liquidated damages 11. CHARGES Example #3- Table of content template for an ICT project 1 INTRODUCTION 2 DEFINITIONS 3 PROJECT DESCRIPTION 4 SCOPE DEFINITION 4.1 IN SCOPE 4.2 OUT OF SCOPE 4.3 SCOPE CHANGE 5 ASSUMPTIONS, CONSTRAINTS AND DEPENDENCIES 5.1 ASSUMPTIONS 5.2 CONSTRAINTS 5.3 DEPENDENCIES 6 PROJECT RISKS 7 PROJECT SCHEDULE 8 DELIVERABLES 9 DELIVERABLE TOOLS DEFINITION 10 ACCEPTANCE AND ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA 10.1 ACCEPTANCE PROCESS FOR FIXED PRICE DELIVERABLES 10.1.1 Custom Software Acceptance 10.1.2 Acceptance Testing Procedure 10.1.3 Document Acceptance 10.2 ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA FOR T & M DELIVERABLES 11 CUSTOMER NAME RESPONSIBILITIES 11.1 DECISION POINTS AND PROCESS 12 MATERIALS, EQUIPMENT AND FACILITIES 12.1 BASELINE ENVIRONMENT 12.2 PROVIDED BY CUSTOMER NAME 12.3 PROVIDED BY SUPPLIER 12.4 PROVIDED BY THIRD PARTY 13 PROJECT ORGANISATION STRUCTURE 13.1 PROJECT TEAM ORGANISATION STRUCTURE 13.2 ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES 13.3 STAKEHOLDERS 14 PROJECT COMMUNICATION 14.1 COMMUNICATION MATRIX 14.2 COMMUNICATION PLAN 14.3 STATUS MEETINGS 14.4 STATUS REPORTING 14.5 PROJECT ESCALATION PROCESS 15 PRICE AND PAYMENT 15.1 FIXED PRICE 15.2 TIME AND MATERIALS: DAILY RATE 15.3 TIME AND MATERIALS: HOURLY RATE 15.4 TRAVEL AND ACCOMMODATION EXPENSES 16 STATEMENT OF WORK APPROVAL Checklists 1. Has the Statement of Work (SOW) be signed by both the customer and the supplier? 2. Has the project scope been documented, reviewed and signed off by the customer in the SOW and does the SOW include payment milestones and the customer's responsibilities. For example the customer may be responsible to provide some project resources. 3. Have the assumptions, exclusions and dependencies been documented in the SOW? 4. Have all external dependencies and constraints been documented in the SOW and included in the Project Management Plan? 5. Are all deliverables clearly described and identified, with measurable acceptance criteria and, signed off by the customer? Acceptance of deliverables is very important and the statement of work should define for each deliverable what will be the acceptance criteria. For example detailed design might be accepted by signing off the detailed design document after 2 review cycles. Testing might be accepted after the test report is produced showing that there are no outstanding severity 1 or 2 test defects. 6. If the project includes migrations of data or applications, have they been scoped, priced and planned? 7. Has a commercial model been prepared that is in line with the project schedule and covering all project costs. 8. Are signed purchase orders in place between the supplier and the Customer, and the supplier and subcontractors, and are all authorised changes covered by a signed purchase order? 9. Are contracts with other suppliers documented? Further Reading
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For the project office to use. A list of things to check off in managing a project grouped into sections from scope, time, budget, quality and management. Instantly check the health of any project by scoring against these 117 questions.
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The following is a project checklist, which can be used by project managers, program managers, delivery managers, pre sales consultants and anyone who is focused on ensuring that all areas of a project are being managed to ensure successful delivery. It is organised around the lifecycle of a project from initiation through delivery and close out.
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November 2019
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