Software Development Terms

Requirements and assumptions

The specification, user journeys, roles, data and integrations should be agreed before or during discovery. Estimates rely on the information available at the time and may change where hidden complexity, changed requirements or third-party limitations are discovered.

Milestones and change control

Work may be delivered in stages. Each stage can include review and acceptance criteria. New requirements, changed workflows or additional integrations must be assessed for cost, risk and timetable before implementation.

Data, migration and integrations

The client is responsible for the accuracy, legality and backup of source data. Data cleaning, migration, mapping and reconciliation are included only where specified. External APIs and platforms remain subject to provider availability, permissions, limits and pricing.

Testing and acceptance

The client should complete user acceptance testing against the agreed requirements and report reproducible issues within the review period. A system may be treated as accepted when it is approved, used live or the review period expires without a material issue being reported.

Security and hosting

Reasonable secure-development practices are used, but no system can be guaranteed invulnerable. Security also depends on hosting, credentials, user behaviour, updates and third-party services. Penetration testing, formal certification, disaster recovery and regulated-sector controls are included only when expressly scoped.

Licence and source code

The proposal states whether bespoke source code is assigned, licensed or hosted as a managed service. Pre-existing libraries, frameworks and reusable modules remain separately owned. Open-source and third-party components remain subject to their licences.

Support and ongoing development

Maintenance, monitoring, backups, user support, compatibility updates and future features require an ongoing support agreement unless included in the initial scope. Operating systems, browsers and providers may change after launch and create future work.

Questions about this document can be sent to contact@performance-marketing.uk.