The notion of Evaluation Specification can be traced back to ISO 14598-5, an international standard, which provides guidance for the practical implementation of software product evaluation. The standard defines the main characteristics of the evaluation process (repeatability, reproducibility, impartiality, objectivity).

An Evaluation Specification is produced on the basis of the evaluation requirements. To make valid comparisons requires measurement. Therefore, requirements need to be specified precisely and in measurable terms.

An Evaluation Specification can be thought of as a structured document.  Although there are many similarities with common text documents that you would normally create and edit with applications such as Microsoft Word and OpenOffice Writer, there are also some distinct differences.

To begin with, a typical Evaluation Specification consists of Parts, Sections and Paragraphs. Just like an ordinary text document, an Evaluation Specification may contain nested Sections.

What distinguishes an Evaluation Specification from an ordinary text document are Requirement Groups and Requirements. A Requirement Group is a special kind of Section in that it groups one or more Requirements and has specific properties (e.g. Requirement Group Weight). A Requirement is a structured description with the following properties: 

• Requirement Statement: A clear and non-ambiguous statement of the requirement that a solution is expected to meet.
• Requirement Rationale: A justification of the requirement. Otherwise, one could only guess at the rationale of the requirement's existence.
• Requirement Quality Measure: A measurement of the requirement such that it is possible to establish whether the solution matches the original requirement.
• Requirement Level: A classification into levels which are equivalent to the ones proposed by RFC 2119 ('Must', 'Should', etc.).
• Requirement Weight: An indication of the relative importance of the requirement.

In addition, you can provide a Public Comment and a Private Comment. A potential offeror can view the Public Comment, but not the Private Comment.

There will be a growing number of ready-to-use Evaluation Specifications, which contain all of the typical requirements that you would expect for the particular subject. Of course, in case you have unique requirements, you can always customize an Evaluation Specification to make it fully meet your particular needs.

Even for a domain expert, authoring an Evaluation Specification often takes 10 person days and more. With ready-to-use Evaluation Specifications, you can do it in a fraction of that time and cost.