Translate every material dependency into an owner, deliverable, price treatment and acceptance test. Do not leave the scorecard detached from the statement of work.
For exit planning, the community-bank guide explicitly considers transition resources and capability. NYDFS’s third-party guidance also addresses transition planning, retention obligations and access removal. These sources support considering exit before the relationship ends; the detailed contract schedule below is the desk’s proposed implementation. (federalreserve.gov)
Attach this acceptance schedule to the procurement pack
| Required field | What to record |
|---|---|
| Requirement and test IDs | Direct links to the approved scope and demonstration evidence |
| Deliverable | Observable output—not simply “configured module” |
| Delivery method | Standard, configuration, custom development or third-party component |
| Accountable parties | Supplier, partner and buyer responsibilities separately |
| Dependencies | Data, access, decisions, licences, people and external systems |
| Commercial treatment | Included price, capped exposure or separately approved change |
| Acceptance method | Test data, expected result, evaluator and evidence retained |
| Defect handling | Severity, remedy, retest and consequences of non-acceptance |
| Handover | Runbooks, configuration inventory, training and operational ownership |
| Exit treatment | Export scope, timing, formats, assistance, retention and deletion process |
Have procurement and legal negotiate the final wording, including acceptance, remedies, audit rights, liability and termination. These are buyer-specific contractual decisions, not universal clauses supplied by this scorecard.
Use a workbook that preserves the decision trail
Create separate tabs for:
- Scope and weighting version.
- Mandatory gates.
- Requirements and supplier responses.
- Tests, observations and defects.
- Scores and evidence caps.
- TCO and scenarios.
- Contract dependencies and acceptance.
- Decision, dissent and approvals.
A useful score-register header is:
Requirement ID | Criterion | Weight | Critical? | Supplier/SKU/release | Delivery method | Suitability score | Evidence level | Earned score | Evidence reference | Gap | Owner | Due date | Contract reference | Retest result
Preserve evaluator scores before moderation, the final agreed score and the reason for any change. Freeze each decision version. Repeat relevant tests after material changes to scope, configuration, delivery partner or enabled AI.
What should the committee sign?
- [ ] The first-release scope and exclusions are understood.
- [ ] Every mandatory gate has accountable approval.
- [ ] Scores refer to the quoted configuration and proposed delivery team.
- [ ] Material evidence gaps and dissenting views are visible.
- [ ] Internal delivery and operating capacity are funded.
- [ ] Three-year costs and downside exposures are understood.
- [ ] Accepted dependencies appear in executable commercial documents.
- [ ] Migration, retrieval and exit have been tested at a representative level.
- [ ] Any referral or introduction arrangement is disclosed separately and has not altered scoring.
The decision to defend is not “this supplier had the most features”. It is “this proposal met our non-negotiable conditions, demonstrated the workflows we need, and had an operating and commercial commitment we were prepared to accept”.
Sources cited on this page
- federalreserve.gov ↗www.federalreserve.gov