How Small Businesses Can Write a Good Scope of Work

Be Specific

In short, the best advice to writing a good scope of work for a client agreement is to be specific. The SOW will describe what the creator is obligated to do. If all you say is “Develop a Website” it will be very ambiguous about what that means. How many pages? What will they look like? Who will write the content? Will there be photos or videos? Etc.

In addition to the actual services, it is smart to include specific dates or time periods during which the work will be completed. And if you need anything from the client during that time period, be sure to place time limits on them too.

Use Lists

One good strategy is to break the scope of work into sections with lists. For example, when developing a website, you might use something like this:

The Contractor will create a website for the client as follows:

• The site will include four pages: Home, About, Services, Contact.
• The contractor will develop a rough wireframe of each page and deliver the same to the client by October 15, 2019. The client will have seven days to review and offer feedback on the pages. The contractor will then deliver final wireframes on or before October 31, 2019.
• The contractor will deliver final versions of each page on or before November 30, 2019.
• Each page will feature 500-600 words, which will be written by the contractor. The client may request one round of edits for each page.
• The website will include up to five stock photos, which will be sourced by the contractor.

What’s Not Included?

Depending on the type of work involved, it may be smart to list things that are not included. For example, if you are developing a website, you may want to state that hosting of the development site is included, but ongoing hosting after you launch the site are not included. And related, you may need to make it clear that you will not be doing ongoing maintenance or updates to the site unless the clients signs a new client agreement (or a new SOW) covering that additional work.

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Related Guides

There’s so much more to learn! Here are a few related guides you should read:

• The Boilerplate: 12 “boilerplate” contract provisions you should know
• Templates: Four ways to get a contract template
• The Skinny: What is a Contract?
• Drafting: Five rules to write better contracts