In project management, the purpose of the statement of work (SOW) is to document the objectives, constraints, and scope of a project. However, it cannot and certainly should not attempt to document every agreement about the project. The SOW should record the objectives and constraints for managing the project. The minimum content listed here gives you an idea of what makes up a good SOW:

• Purpose statement: A clear description of why the organization is doing the project, a description of the problem the project aims to solve.
• Project objectives: The specific, measurable, achievable and time bound goals of the project (SMART goals)
• Scope statement: A description of the major activities of the project in such a way that it will be absolutely clear if extra work is added later on.
• Key deliverables: A list of outputs the project will produce, including intermediate deliverables, end deliverables, and deliverables related to project management.
• Budget and schedule estimates: In addition to a budget and a deadline, a description of how flexible the budget is and the rationale behind the deadline.

The principal purpose of the SOW is for managing expectations of key stakeholders, such as beneficiaries, the donors, and even partners; and helps when dealing with changes to the scope. Without a good description of scope, projects will suffer from scope creep, which refers to uncontrolled changes in a project's scope. The SOW will also include a section that will detail what is out of scope, this helps manage the expectations of key stakeholders on the limits of the project. When disagreements about the scope arise after the project has started, they can sometimes be solved by reviewing the original SOW. In this case, all stakeholders must understand, agree, and approve to these changes, and the project manager must write them into the SOW or track them through other project management processes such as change orders. The SOW is a living document that tracks all approved changes made during the life of the project.

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