Contractual jargon

A contractual lexicon.

Contractual documents

The contract flow can be seen as such:

• NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement)
  Before signing a contract, a NDA (Non-Disclosure-Agreement) is needed in most cases in order to save both sides interests.

• MSA (Master Service Agreement)
  Defines how the two companies will do business together.

• SOW (Statement of Work)
  Describes the work to be performed for the client. Note that the MSA defines the “how” and the SOW defines the “what” of the work.

• CO (Change Order)
  Change Orders document any changes in scope, budget, timeline, assumptions or any other deviation from the current SOW.

• PR/PO (Purchase Request/Purchase Order)
  Usually for bigger companies - in this case in most cases no MSA or SOW needed

You can read more here.