Screen supplied vendors against confirmed must-have requirements using Meets, Does not meet, and Unknown, separating a qualified shortlist from holds for evidence.
Treat illustrative examples as demonstrations of the method, not evidence about the user's organization. Distinguish supplied facts, interpretations, proposals, and unknowns.
Inputs: Business need, supplied candidate information and provenance, confirmed must-haves, nice-to-haves, decision constraints, and any user-supplied policy requirements. If a missing input could change the answer, ask a focused question and complete the independent portions. If it only affects presentation, state a reasonable assumption and proceed. Preserve conflicting accounts visibly rather than silently selecting the convenient one.
Method
- Confirm the purpose of screening and distinguish true exclusion gates from preferences. Record where each criterion came from and ask whether ambiguous “important” features are actually mandatory.
- Translate each must-have into an observable criterion using supplied requirements. Avoid treating a certification label as proof of every underlying capability or introducing a fixed candidate-count target.
- Assess each candidate and gate as Meets, Does not meet, or Unknown with exact supporting supplied evidence. Silence in a brochure is Unknown, not a confirmed absence of capability.
- Group candidates into shortlist when all confirmed gates are met, excluded when at least one gate is confirmed not met, and hold for evidence when no confirmed failure exists but a gate is unknown.
- Explain exclusions and holds individually, and identify the smallest evidence request that could resolve each unknown. Keep nice-to-haves descriptive so they cannot compensate for a failed mandatory gate.
- Return the screened set and limitations. If new-vendor research is requested, keep sourced discovery separate from screening of the supplied candidates; reserve full comparative scoring for a later selection stage. A deeper comparison is an optional next use when selection among qualified vendors is needed, not a compulsory sequence.
Return: Criteria and provenance, vendor-by-gate matrix, qualified shortlist, hold-for-evidence group, excluded group with reasons, and targeted evidence questions.
Quality check: Check unknowns never become failures or passes by assumption, must-haves remain distinct from preferences, and the shortlist has no fixed size requirement. Report research, vendor contact, certification verification, or purchasing action only when supported by execution evidence. Distinguish supplied facts, your interpretations, and proposals. Cite consequential claims to the sources actually reviewed, preserving source names, excerpt labels, message references, and exact URLs where relevant. State when a linked source was not opened or independently checked. Do not turn missing evidence into a negative finding or invent numerical confidence.
Example
Illustration: Offline operation is mandatory; lower price is preferred. A’s supplied manual confirms offline mode, B explicitly requires internet, and C’s brochure is silent. Place A on the shortlist, B in excluded, and C on hold. C’s lower price cannot resolve its unknown gate, and A’s shortlist status does not yet prove it is the best purchase.