Begin with the problem you are solving, app store optimization agency not your preferred technology. Which people will use it day to day, how often, and what happens today? A vendor who understands the goal often proposes a cheaper route to it; a team that receives only a list of screens will price your assumptions along with the work.
Set out the scope as short scenarios: what the user does and what the system does in response. Every bit as useful, write down what the first release deliberately excludes. An explicit exclusion list prevents more disagreement later than any other single page. Indicate as well which items are decided and which are still open — estimators price uncertainty, and concealing the open questions helps no one.
Set out your constraints. These include systems you must integrate with, the data you have and where it lives, government software development services regulatory obligations, traffic expectations, which devices matter and stacks you cannot change. If there is a hard date, say what depends on it: a team is usually able to resequence the work to hit it, but not if the date is a secret.
Write down what the word done means for each item. Acceptance criteria do not require any formal notation: a plain-language note setting out what a user should be able to do is sufficient. That one addition reduces the review at the end dramatically and eliminates most late-stage disagreement.
To close, state what you want in the response. Ask for an itemised estimate, the assumptions behind each number, whatever the team considers risky and a low number and a high number. Read a wide range as useful information rather than evasion: it tells you the part of the brief that needs work. From there rewrite that part and request a revised number — the revised figure is the one worth planning around.
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