Writing a specification you can accept work against

1. 01

   Write how you will know it is done, before writing what to build.

   The specification is then whatever satisfies those conditions. Written forwards it describes a solution and transfers the risk to you — the supplier delivered what was specified and it does not do what was needed.

   If insteadYou cannot state the conditions without describing the implementation. That means the outcome is not yet decided, and no amount of specification will hide it.

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   02

   Can somebody non-technical check every criterion alone?

   A count, a number, a page that loads, a file that opens. Anything requiring the supplier to judge whether it has been met is a description wearing a criterion's clothes.

   If instead“Performance is improved.” “The architecture is scalable.” “Follows best practice.” Rewrite each until it is a thing you could verify on a Sunday.

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   03

   What is explicitly out of scope?

   The absent section that prevents half the change orders. Writing it is quick and uncomfortable, which is the same reason the criteria get postponed.

   If insteadNothing is out of scope. Then everything is arguable, and it will be argued at the point where the leverage has moved.

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   04

   How does scope change, and what does the record look like?

   Movement is normal. Movement agreed on a call produces two sincere versions of the truth. In the UAE added scope is not billable unless the client authorised it and the increase was agreed, so the informality cuts both ways and neither party usually knows it.

   If instead“We will handle it as we go.” Agree the mechanism now, while it costs nothing to agree.

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   05

   What is handed over, in what format, by when?

   Accounts in your name, source in a repository you own, data exported in a format that opens without their tooling. Written as a condition of acceptance rather than as a final task, because a final task is the one that gets compressed.

   If instead“All materials provided on request.” That is satisfied by a zip file nobody can use.

It is real

Conditions written first, each checkable by you alone, an out-of-scope section, a change mechanism, and handover as a condition of acceptance rather than a closing task.

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It is not

The document describes activity. It will be signed because it is agreeable, and the disagreement is not avoided — it is deferred to the point where it costs the most and you have the least leverage.

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Cannot tell

The outcome is genuinely not known yet, which is common and honest. Then buy the discovery as its own small engagement with its own acceptance criteria, and specify the build afterwards. Do not specify a build you cannot describe.

This check, pointed at us.

Our own service pages

Every service on this site publishes a deliverables list, and by the standard set above most of them are descriptions rather than criteria. Counted on 18 August 2026: 80 deliverables across eighteen services, of which 7 carry something a buyer could check alone — a count, a figure, a named artefact, results attached. “An architecture definition: boundaries, contracts, consistency and failure behaviour” is a description of a document, not a condition that can be false. We are holding suppliers to a standard our own sales pages do not meet, and the arithmetic is on the pages themselves.

SinceNot yet. Rewriting eighty deliverables as conditions is the work this check has just committed us to, and it will make several of them smaller and more specific — which is the point and also the reason it has not been done.

Scope of work

What is being bought, written so that it can be finished — which means written backwards from the acceptance criteria rather than forwards from the wish.

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Acceptance criteria

The conditions that decide whether the work is finished — written before it starts, or they will be written afterwards to describe what arrived.

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Change order

The written record that scope moved and what it now costs — and in the UAE, the thing without which the extra work is not billable.

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Handover

The point at which a vendor's work becomes the company's property — defined by what is transferred, not by the project being finished.

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Vendor selection and total cost

Judging a supplier on what the work costs over its life — including the rebuild — rather than on the quotation.

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SLA

A promise with a number and a consequence attached. Without the consequence it is a wish with a percentage in it.

Every checkThe whole glossary

If the answers did not arrive, that is the finding.

A supplier who cannot supply a base and a period has told you something, and it is not that they are disorganised. We do this for a living and the questions land differently when they come from outside.