Templates like this mask what people are doing, burying the work under boilerplate text and yellow fields to complete.
In World Commerce and Contracting's most negotiated terms research, ten years running, eight of the most disputed contract terms sit inside the Statement of Work.
- Price / Charge / Price Changes
- Scope and Goals / Specification
- Delivery
- Invoices / Late Payment
- Service Levels
- Payment / Payment Options
- Responsibilities of the Parties
- Amendments / Changes to Contract
- Liquidated Damages
- Termination
In 2018, I launched the Defining Work Initiative to build a taxonomy of work; to define how work was described. Today the SoW Standard is owned by World Commerce and Contracting.
The initiative brought together procurement leaders, labour market economists, and contract specialists. After a near decade of research, funding and feedback, the initiative focused on the most chaotic way of engaging work: the Statement of Work. The result is the SoW Standard, owned by World Commerce and Contracting: a single framework for how every Statement of Work is written, reviewed, and managed.
The element register, the JSON Schema, a free checker, and 36 prompts for any LLM, all on GitHub under Apache 2.0. No account needed.
A cross-sector workshop hosted at the Royal Society of Arts stress-tested the 11-section structure, with representatives from government, academia, and international institutions.
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