FIELD · Handbook · 5 min read
Scope the promise and the commercial commitment
Turn discovery into deliverables, acceptance, responsibilities and controlled change.
Arunank Sharan · Kuzushi Labs ·
In this article
The scope should describe a complete customer journey and the conditions under which it is delivered. A feature list alone leaves the difficult questions until acceptance: which users, which data, which exceptions, which load, whose approvals and whose operating budget?
The scope contract
| Field | Worked invoice-pilot commitment |
|---|---|
| Population | 20 named finance operators, one legal entity, one invoice source |
| Trigger | An eligible invoice enters the exception queue |
| Included | Retrieve records, explain discrepancy, propose correction, collect approval, record receipt |
| Excluded | Bank-detail changes, payment execution, tax advice, unattended bulk changes |
| Completion | Approved resolution recorded once in the authoritative application |
| Unknown outcome | Reconciliation queue; no blind resend |
| Workload envelope | 20,000 eligible tasks/month; separate peak test at 5 tasks/s |
| Acceptance | Agreed task correctness, permission, recovery, effort and cost evidence |
| Customer inputs | Named approver, permitted samples, identity integration, test environment |
| Delivery outputs | Application, configuration, evaluations, runbook, operational dashboard and handover |
Monthly volume and peak throughput are separate assumptions. Twenty thousand tasks do not imply five tasks per second all month. Specify the duration and distribution of a peak, and do not use it as the billing forecast.
Make acceptance reproducible
Each acceptance condition needs a population, denominator, threshold, measurement method, exclusions, owner and consequence of failure. Example: “On the frozen 240-task acceptance set, every unauthorized-action test is blocked before any external effect; any violation prevents release.” This is a finite test result, not a statistical guarantee of zero future failures.
For effort, include abandoned attempts and fallback. For latency, state the start and end events and report the workload distribution. For service availability, state the user-visible operation and measurement window. For recovery, identify the state to restore and the allowed data loss. Acceptance must be agreed before tuning against the test set; a held-out set remains protected.
Price the uncertainty appropriately
A bounded discovery phase can be fixed fee because its deliverables and time cap are concrete. A build with stable acceptance and controlled dependencies may also support a fixed fee. Work with unresolved source behavior or changing requirements is better expressed as a capped time-and-materials or milestone arrangement with decision checkpoints. These are commercial options to negotiate, not universal pricing advice.
As a worked delivery estimate, assume 20 lead days at SGD 900 internal cost/day, 30 engineering days at SGD 650, and 10 evaluation/enablement days at SGD 500. Direct labor is SGD 42,500. Add SGD 3,000 tools and infrastructure plus a 15% contingency on those direct costs: SGD 6,825. The resulting estimated delivery cost is SGD 52,325. At a SGD 75,000 fee, contribution before overhead is SGD 22,675, or 30.23% of the fee. These are example cost inputs, not Kuzushi Labs rates or an offer.
Sixty person-days over six weeks needs an average of two full-time people at five working days/week. Sequencing still matters: a specialist may be required before others can proceed. Adding another person late cannot automatically recover a missed access milestone.
Allocate obligations explicitly
Record ownership of code, background intellectual property, customer data, generated artifacts, configuration and evaluation sets. Agree allowed reuse and publication separately. Identify vendor accounts, usage commitments, model/data licence restrictions and any subcontractor access. Set support hours, severity definitions, response targets, escalation contacts and the end of the initial support period. Where regulated or contractual interpretation is needed, the designated specialist supplies that approval.
Payment milestones should correspond to accepted deliverables and an agreed review process. State the review window, who can accept, how a material defect is documented, the correction process and whether partial acceptance is possible. Do not imply silent acceptance unless the parties explicitly agreed to it.
Change control that preserves delivery
A change record contains the request, reason, options, effect on cost/date/risk, affected evidence and decision owner. Consider three options: exchange an existing item, add a priced milestone, or defer. A newly requested write permission can change the consequence of failure even if it adds only one API call.
Example: adding a second ERP source requires six engineering days, two evaluation days and a new access review. At the planning costs above, direct added labor is SGD 5,200 before tools, contingency and commercial margin. The schedule cannot be promised until the source owner confirms access. The revised baseline is signed off and versioned; earlier acceptance evidence is reassessed for the changed boundary.
Exit without ambiguity
Define termination deliverables, access revocation, outstanding invoices, data export and deletion, unfinished-task treatment and transition assistance. A customer should know what remains usable if a vendor relationship ends. The scope contract is successful when both parties can explain what is included, what constitutes acceptance and how a changed request becomes an explicit decision.