Skip to content
Walid Redwan

For owners, CFOs and whoever signs the project off

The buyer's playbook

Most Odoo projects that go wrong do not fail on the software. They fail because nobody on the client side ever wrote down what "delivered" was going to mean. This is the client-side half of the job — how to specify what you need, what to require from a partner, and how to check that you got it.

  1. Prepare

    1. 00 Before you shortlist anyone
    2. 01 What to require from a partner

  2. Specify

    1. 02 How to write a BRD your partner can price
    2. 03 Scope, and what happens when it changes

  3. Control delivery

    1. 04 What your partner owes you, phase by phase
    2. 05 Proving the requirements were delivered

  4. Land it

    1. 06 Go-live readiness and the first close
    2. 07 Owning your system afterwards

  1. 00

    Before you shortlist anyone

    The decisions that have to be made inside your own company before a partner is worth talking to: who sponsors it, who decides, what you can spend, and what the deadline really is.

  2. 01

    What to require from a partner

    How to judge an Odoo partner before you sign: what to require in writing, the questions that separate delivery people from sales people, the red flags, and what to ask a reference.

  3. 02

    How to write a BRD your partner can price

    The document that decides whether your quotes are comparable and whether "delivered" will ever have a definition. Anatomy, how to write a single requirement, the section most people leave out, and a template you can copy.

  4. 03

    Scope, and what happens when it changes

    The fit-gap matrix that turns a requirements list into a contract, how a change request should work, and how to spot scope drift while it is still cheap to stop.

  5. 04

    What your partner owes you, phase by phase

    The client-side view of an implementation: the deliverable at the end of each phase, who signs it, what done should mean, and how payment ought to be attached to it.

  6. 05

    Proving the requirements were delivered

    How to check that you got what you specified: a traceability matrix, UAT run by the people who do the work, honest defect severities, and the one test that matters more than all the others.

  7. 06

    Go-live readiness and the first close

    The cut-over: choosing the date, the sequence on the day, reconciling opening balances, a rollback you could actually use, and what hypercare should mean.

  8. 07

    Owning your system afterwards

    What you must hold at the end — repository, documentation, a restore you have actually tested, admin access — and how to plan support and upgrades without being locked in.

Learn · Becoming an Odoo consultant

Stuck on something here?

These guides are free and always will be. If you are working through one and you hit something that does not make sense, write to me — I answer.

Send me a message