Length: 2 Days
SOW Writing Training, Statement of Work Training
A well-defined Statement Of Work (SOW) is the first step toward delivering a project on time, within the scope and within budget.
What’s more, the SOW serves as reference material throughout the project. The document defines the central goal of the project and the work that has to be finished at the end. All this is agreed upon at the signature of the SOW. A good Statement Of Work serves to protect you as well as your client.
The SOW is often thought of as the project contract and essentially sets and aligns expectations. A SOW should provide high-level overarching project information and defines detailed deliverables, standards, criteria, and requirements for each phase.
The SOW contains all the project details wrapped up in one document. It contains important details, such as:
- Process
- Due dates
- Price
- Timeline
- Deliverables
- Defining what is and isn’t acceptable
- Invoicing schedules
It’s important to understand there is no one way to produce a SOW. They can be six pages or 60. They should all be doing the same thing and setting the parameters of the project so everyone knows the boundaries of the project.
Also, a SOW can be valuable for internal projects. While you won’t need client sign off, it’s worth having one for team organizations. It will set up expectations for your team and outline the tasks and deliverables they’ll need to complete.
Some organizations lean on something called SMART to accomplish their SOW objectives. SMART stands for:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic
- Time-bound
These five elements should be kept in mind at all times when writing a SOW. Other important parts of a SOW should include scope of work, milestones, schedules and deliverables.
A scope of work is a designated section for putting down what work needs to be completed in the project, how it will be executed, and how much time the project will take. General steps and process details should all be specified here.
Including milestones information is equally important. If the project is long and complex, it’s often broken down into milestones – interim events for measuring progress. Specifying duration and billable hours for each milestone will help you predict the end date of the project.
A schedule in SOW writing is a project timeline including milestones, tasks, and resources throughout the project’s lifecycle. Depending on the type of engagement you’re in, the schedule can be left until a later point. For example, if retainer agreements are used and you’re delivering services on an on-going basis, there will be less paperwork and, consequently, the schedule could be excluded.
SOW Writing Training, Statement of Work Training Seminar by Tonex
SOW writing training provides you with concepts, tools, approaches, and configuration of Statement of Work (SOW). Statement of Work is the basis of the correlation between buyers and sellers.
The sale of goods and services can only be implemented by competently generating the SOW document. SOW writing training is intended for hands-on usage by requirements developers, in-house SOW team people and other project managers and contract managers whose roles contained appropriately determining needs and converting them into quality contracts. It delivers the knowledge you need, comprising of fundamental contract management notions, to reliably develop and administer effective SOWs.
SOW writing training applies challenging team practices and scenarios that will take you across the process of building a strong statement of work. You will comprehend how the Master Agreement is related with the SOW. Then, you will become familiar with the evolution of the SOW, (needs, objectives, requirements) and, varying with your situation, how a Statement of Object (SOO) and/or a SOW outline should be prepared in the SOW. You also will learn about the poorly written and designed SOWs and/or parts of SOWs and re-writing them applying best practices and standards.
Participants of this intensive, hands-on seminar will exercise to write each section of the SOW. Participants will also examine SOWs from a contractor’s view, the questions a contractor might have upon reading the SOW, and the inconsistencies that cause confusion. You will learn best practices for making sure your SOWs communicate to your intended readers in order to accomplish the best value for your acquisitions.
Learn About:
- Acquisition Planning
- Market Research
- Performance Documents
- Developing Statements of Work
- Importance of Language
- Developing Evaluation Factors
- Quality Assurance Surveillance Plans
- Performance Incentives
- The value of SOW
- The application of SOW
- SOW construction
- Writing SOW
- Contract SOW vs a project SOW
- Developing your own SOW style
SOW writing training is a hands-on course including group activities, templates, and hands-on workshop.
Audience
SOW writing training is a 2-day course designed for:
- Federal employees
- Contractors
- PMP-certified project managers
- IT project managers
- Project coordinators
- Project analysts
- Project leaders
- Senior project managers
- Team leaders
- Product managers
- Program managers
- Project sponsors
- Project team members
- All individuals who need to write a SOW
Learning Objectives
Upon the completion of SOW writing training, the attendees can:
- Recognize the usual mistakes of incorrect, confusing or mis-constructed narratives
- Use simple approaches and “best practice” methods that will secure high quality in their SOW documents
- Identify what a “breach of contract” requires
- Help others to evaluate SOWs for quality, clarity and unity
- Use data on how the courts historically understand arguments in contract language based on long-standing rules
- Identify the actual requirements
- Choose a proper SOW type that fulfills the government requirements
- Explain all features of the work to be performed in a way that will be comprehended
- Write a clear SOW that will lead to responsive, competitive proposals
- Assess the effect of a SOW on accomplishing best value across the acquisition process
Course Outline
Overview of SOW Writing
- The contract fundamental components
- Contract law concepts
- Categories of contracts
- Contracts potential risks
- Managing conflicts
- Contract guidelines
- The goal of the SOW
- Master contracts
- Master agreement usual components
- Master Agreement vs SOW
- Differences in the view of the SOW between buyer and seller
- SOW value
- Relationship of the SOW to the solicitation
- SOW process and results
- Requirement description
The SOW Background
- Identifying the needs from expectations
- Empowering objectives into requirements
- Background of the SOW
- The Statement of Objective purpose
- How the WBS (Work Breakout Structure) relates to requirements and the SOW
- Getting ready for a SOW
- SOW glossary
- The SOW approaches
- Goals in writing a SOW
- How does a well-written SOW look like?
Describing the Work
- Simplifying the work
- Determining the necessary skills and resources
- Analyzing risk
- Identifying deliverables
Generating the Narrative
- The questions to begin a SOW
- Purpose of the SOW template
- Issues related with poor writing and bad construction
- Principals for writing the SOW
- Quality Assurance across the Use of the Master list
- The logic behind the SOW master list
- The usage of the master list by the SOW writer
Signed SOW Modifications
- Managing the contract
- Monitoring modifications to the SOW
- Positive SOW changes
- Keeping issues and disputes under control
- SOW tools
- SOW outline
- SOW template
- General list for the SOW writer
Developing the SOW
- Various forms of SOW
- SOW style
- Be to the point and clear
- Writing tips
Dealing with Your SOW
- SOW Effectiveness
- How to react to the contractor questions
- Managing the contract through the SOW
Tonex Case Study and Templates Samples
- How to Write a Statement of Work
- Human Capital
- Operations Support
- Organizational Support
- Technology Solutions
- Statements of Work Review
SOW Writing Workshop
- Working with Tonex SOW Templates
- How to Write a Statement of Work
- What Makes Up a Statement of Work?
- Introduction
- Scope of Work
- Overview of Tasks
- Milestones
- Deliverables
- Schedule
- Standards and Testing (Verification and Validation)
- Define Success Criteria
- Success KPIs
- Requirements
- Payments/Cost
- Others
- Closure
SOW Writing Training