Clients: why and how should you attach a requirements matrix to your specifications?
Date
November, 2025
Reading time
8 minutes
Category
Best practice
Peggy Herman
is co-founder and Managing Director of Bee4win, where she oversees the company’s consulting and pre-sales service activities. Since 2002, she has managed numerous public and private tenders, ranging from a few tens of thousands to several hundred million euros, in sectors as varied as IT, energy, industry and events. An expert in pre-sales, Peggy continues to provide bid management and writing services, coaching and training. She has also been conducting studies on best practices in this field for over 10 years. Committed to the development of the pre-sales profession, she is president of the French-speaking chapter of APMP and a frequent speaker at events including the Bid and Proposal Conference Europe and Bee4win’s customers.
Experte en avant-vente, Peggy réalise encore aujourd’hui des prestations en bid management, bid writing, coaching et formation, et mène depuis 10 ans des travaux d’étude sur les meilleures pratiques du domaine. Engagée dans la promotion de l’avant-vente, elle préside le chapter Francophonie de l’APMP et intervient régulièrement en tant que conférencière, notamment lors de la Bid and Proposal Conference Europe et auprès des clients de Bee4win.
Mots clés
#Requirements matrix
#Specifications
Too often, specifications are drafted without a clear and comprehensive view of the requirements being truly formalized. The result? Ambiguities, omissions, and even contradictions that complicate both the tendering phase and contract execution.
The requirements matrix is a simple, structuring, and extremely powerful tool to avoid such pitfalls. When properly designed, it brings clarity, traceability, and efficiency to every stage of the lifecycle of a public or private contract.
1. What is a requirements matrix?
Requirements: the building blocks of specifications
In a specifications document or a tender, a requirement defines what the awarded company must do — or comply with. It formalizes a need or a constraint that the contractor must meet to be contractually compliant.
These requirements may be explicit (clearly stated in the document) or implicit (derived from context, regulations, or other contractual documents).
Different types of requirements
Several categories of requirements can be distinguished, such as:
Response requirements: related to the tendering phase.
Example: “The proposal must be submitted before June 30 at 12:00,” or “The technical statement must not exceed 30 pages.”
These guide bidders in preparing their offers.Solution requirements: defining the service, deliverables, or solution to be provided.
Example: “The software must support multi-site user management,” or “The contractor must deliver the equipment listed in Annex 3.”
They express the contracting authority’s operational needs.Project requirements: focusing on organization and resources.
Example: “The contractor shall appoint a project manager available during business hours,” or “Deliverables must be validated in a project committee before deployment.”
A matrix for structuring and exploiting these requirements
A requirements matrix is a table listing all these elements. Each requirement is identified, numbered, and may include additional metadata such as:
Category (response, solution, project, legal, security…)
Level of importance or criticality
Priority (mandatory, desirable, optional)
Status (draft, validated, modified, deleted…)
Reference to the original section in the specifications document
The objective: provide a clear, exhaustive, and structured view of every expectation expressed in the tender documents — ensuring a shared understanding of scope between the client and the bidders.
2. Why create a requirements matrix to attach to your specifications?
To improve the quality and clarity of the tender documents
A requirements matrix provides a global and precise view of contractual obligations. It acts as a mirror to the specifications: if a requirement does not appear in the matrix, it may have been forgotten; if it appears twice, there might be duplication or contradiction.
In other words, the matrix helps clean and refine the document before publication — a key step to avoid future disputes or misunderstandings.
To ensure consistency and save time across multiple tenders
Upstream of your consultations, you can also build matrices collecting generic requirements applicable across several contracts, classified by categories when relevant.
This requirements baseline can then be easily reused to draft new specifications, particularly recurring sections such as legal, security or sustainability requirements.
This approach improves consistency and standardization while reducing preparation time for future tenders.
To facilitate offer evaluation
By asking each bidder to complete the matrix, you obtain an immediate and comparable view of responses. For each requirement, they may indicate:
Compliance level (fully compliant / partially compliant / non-compliant)
A justification in case of partial or non-compliance
The section of their bid where the response can be found
Requirements can also be weighted based on importance, allowing for transparent, objective, and faster evaluation. Differences between bids are easier to see, and scoring is more justifiable.
To simplify contract performance monitoring
Once the contract is awarded, the requirements matrix remains invaluable during execution. Solution requirements, for instance, can be linked to deliverables and used as the basis for project compliance monitoring.
It becomes the common thread linking the initial need, the supplier’s response, and the final result.
3. Best Practices and Key Considerations to Build an Effective Requirements Matrix
Follow the EARS template
The EARS (Easy Approach to Requirements Syntax) standard provides a structured format to write clear, unambiguous requirements. It uses a simple pattern:
While <optional precondition(s)>, when/if <optional trigger>, the <solution name / responsible party> must <expected action(s)>
Each requirement includes:
0–N preconditions
0 or 1 trigger
1 solution name (or responsible party for organizational requirements)
1–N expected actions
Example:
“When the user enters an incorrect password, the system must display an error message.”
This format encourages requirements that are testable and unambiguous.
Apply rules that ensure clarity, precision, and completeness
According to the INCOSE Guide to Writing Requirements (see the complete guide or a summary), a well-written requirement must be:
Unambiguous: clearly interpreted in only one way
Complete: sufficiently describes the needed capability or constraint
Feasible: achievable under the project’s constraints (cost, schedule, technical, legal…)
Verifiable: structured so that compliance can be checked
Our white paper, “How to Properly Write Requirements in Specifications”, includes examples from international standards to help improve requirement quality.
Solutions such as Comply or MRS can also help detect poorly written requirements and provide suggestions for improvement.
Choose the right level of granularity
Granularity must match your organization’s maturity in requirements management and planned use of the matrix.
If the practice is new or you want to limit the number of requirements, you may group several statements into one requirement when:
They describe the same topic
They can be addressed in the same section of the bidders’ responses
They can be verified at the same time
Example: Requesting a Quality Plan and detailing its expected contents can be grouped.
However, requesting a sample Quality Plan at bid submission must remain separate.
Clearly formalize requirements in the specifications
It is recommended to explicitly tag and number each requirement:
[REQ-SPEC-001]
The contractor must provide 24/7 support. This support may be provided by email or telephone. A single telephone number and a generic email address must be provided for this purpose.
[REQ-SPEC-002]
Deliverables must be validated by the project manager within 10 business days.
This formalism facilitates navigation between the document and the matrix and helps to avoid ambiguity during the analysis phase.
Note: it is also possible to add a version or revision number, a category, a title, a priority level, etc. to the identifier of each requirement, by adopting a formalism specific to each piece of metadata.
Use a suitable tool, such as Comply
Managing a requirements matrix manually is time-consuming and error-prone — updates in the document may not be reflected in the matrix, and vice-versa.
Tools like Comply (part of the Bee4win.io platform) allow you to:
Automatically create the requirements matrix (manually or using AI)
Maintain coherence when documents evolve
Customize matrix structure to match your needs
Analyze writing quality and get recommendations
Link requirements together
Detect duplicates or contradictory requirements
Collaborate to manage requirement attributes
Track risks or questions associated with requirements
Export the matrix to Excel
This saves time, improves clarity, and ensures perfect traceability throughout the process.
Conclusion
Requirements matrices remain under-used during the drafting of specifications, even though they are a powerful performance driver for contracting authorities. They not only clarify expectations but also secure the entire procurement cycle — from tender preparation to contract execution.
Adopting this practice enables smoother, more transparent communication between buyer and supplier while reducing the risks of misunderstanding, non-compliance, or schedule drift.
A well-designed requirements matrix is ultimately the best guarantee for selecting the right partner — one who truly understands, respects, and delivers on your needs with no unpleasant surprises.
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