The literature in requirements engineering recognizes the product scoping
activity as an important source of risks and fails in bespoke software projects
due to several reasons, e.g., the typical low involvement of the stakeholders,
the poor initial requirements, inadequate staff to address the activity, or
unrealistic customer expectations. Although this activity is always complex, it
is particularly challenging when it addresses the development and evolution of
bespoke software products, and where the product was intervened by multiple
providers. This article presents an instrument that allows providers and
customers to perform the scoping of bespoke information systems, in
multi-provider scenarios, reducing the information loss between projects. The
proposed instrument is a canvas specialized to address the scoping of
information systems, which supports most of the major activities of the
requirements engineering process. The canvas was formally evaluated through a
qualitative study that involved ten bespoke projects (six bespoke products),
and it was perceived as usable and useful for the participants. Some of them
have already adopted it by replacing their previous practices. Various others
indicated that they plan to adopt it soon. Although this proposal is focused on
scoping information systems, the scoping approach is extensible to other
software systems types.