Here are some ways that a meeting can go wrong:

a) attendees arriving late
b) People talking to their neighbour (off-topic) during the meeting
c) People wanting to only talk about their topic and hijacking the agenda
d) Weak chairmanship
e) No agenda, "because we know what we’re going to discuss"
f) No follow-up on action items from the previous week
g) Missing attendees who are needed and didn’t say they would be missing
h) Action minutes from previous meeting not available for the meeting
i) Having people attend for the whole meeting when they are only needed for one topic and could leave after it
j) Allowing one person to dominate the meeting and make their point, air their grievance, change the topic mid-stream or give their biased point of view
k) Allowing agenda items to go way over their allotted time (remember the time allocation is only a guide, but it’s a good guide)
l) Meeting length is dictated by the agenda
m) The agenda should not be so long that people lose the will to live part way through. Only you will know what is the right length. Saying it should be 10 minutes, 30 minutes or an hour is irrelevant if you don’t cover your agenda items.
n) The type of meeting makes a difference, for instance an IT project status meeting can be short, whereas a manufacturing plant meeting could be half a day. It all depends on what you need to do and by when
p) The worst thing to do is to come out of the meeting with no action notes and with people unclear as to what they should be doing. So always have a summary of actions at the meeting end.

q) Not sending out an agenda based on the required actions from the meeting and new issues since

r) Having regular meetings that are no longer productive or required

And unfortunately there really is no magic lamp you can rub to make your proposal suddenly appear neatly bound on your desk.

Typically the bid manager leads the proposal preparation, review and delivery. Often this person is usually the project manager. And it’s vital that the bid manager is involved right from the beginning of the proposal process.

Once most of the clarifying questions have been completely answered the bid manager calls the proposal team together and goes through the Request for Information(RFI), or Invitation To Tender (ITT) and agrees:

• who will write answers for which which section
• who provides details of the solution
• what further materials are required and who is responsible for getting them
• the deadline for submission of all materials
• the review date for the proposal draft

Mid Size Software Consultancy Proposal

Taking as our example a medium consultancy the bid manager might expect something like the following to be produced:

• The prospective project manager – produces project plans, risk register and change control strategy
• The application development managers for each application provide software background and answers to specific questions in the RFI or ITT
• The application development managers also provide expected costs for software changes, implementation and ongoing maintenance
• The accountant provide annual accounts over 1,2 or 3 years (depending on whether they’re requested)
• Sales staff write the proposal summary with the bid manager
• Sales staff to provide marketing collateral to support the proposal
• Experts in the conversion of existing data provide details of conversion, what is covered and, crucially, what is not covered
• Planned hardware provider provides upfront and maintenance costs and availability dates for hardware
• Technical architect to provide overview of solution
• Optionally proposal team to create a presentation for delivering the solution

Small Company Proposals

Small companies still need to provide the same information that a medium sized company does. The only difference is that there’s likely to be, at most, two people getting materials together and writing the proposal.

Any smaller company that intends writing a number of proposals would be best advised to ensure that they get together material and put it in one place so that proposals can be written more easily.

Delivering The Solution

Finally, once the proposal has been written it must be reviewed.  The solution must be carefully checked for feasibility and cost. In addition it’s important to ensure that the solution is “good enough.” Sometimes software can be developed that actually does much more than the client wants or needs. That is a complete waste of time and money for both parties.

Look once more at the RFI, or ITT and check what method of delivery is required. Do they ask for 3 bound copies? Maybe they want the document emailed or sent on a USB stick? What ever method make sure that you provide the proposal in that form.

And lastly, during the whole process, make sure you keep backups as you alter each part of the proposal.

Next time I’ll talk about who should deliver the proposal and when it needs to be delivered.

Table of contents for Better Proposal Writing

1. 10 Questions To Create A Great Proposal
2. Proposal Teams – Who’s In Them?

10 key questions for producing a great proposal were listed in my previous article, (10 Questions To Create A Great Proposal).

Now we can look at the questions “Who’s Involved?” and “What Do They Want?”

Who’s Involved?

You may find it tempting to simply allocate the responsibility for producing a proposal to one person.

And that’s OK, provided the proposal will affect only one area of your company, ever. And the person managing the creation of the proposal understands that particular area as well as the people working in it.

Normally a proposal tends to require involvement from a number of different areas in a company.

Mid Sized Consultancy Example

Let’s take an example. Say you’re a computer consultancy responding to a tender request for the provision of a new set of Financial Back Office applications, including sales, purchase and all financial ledgers.

The people likely to be affected in a mid-sized consultancy organisation could include:

1) The prospective project manager
2) The application development managers for each financial back office application
3) The accountant responsible for project profitability
4) The sales staff responsible for winning the business
5) Experts in the conversion of existing data
6) Representation  from the planned hardware provider (internal or external)
7) Representation from other interested parties to extend the sales possibility of the proposal.
A technical architect
9) The staff who will create the report and the presentation

The reason so many staff are required is that any one of those can affect the production of the proposal document. Proposals tend to be produced in very short timescales. So If any are on holiday during the creation their input would be missed, or the proposal would have to be cancelled.

Again, the application development managers know which products are suitable for the proposal and if a new release is due and when.

The data experts are able to advise on the conversion of existing data and, crucially the complexity and time to create data conversion suites to convert the data from an existing format to the proposed format.

The accountant is there to ensure that the proposal has all the costs included, if any cost is missed it could end up with the consultancy taking a loss on the project.

In a nutshell everyone is there to provide information to ensure the smooth production of a proposal. Often they will need to give further information, or write part of the proposal, and each persons input needs to be dovetailed into an overall timetable.

Responses From A Small Company

What would a small company do to respond?

Obviously they wouldn’t have the number of people I listed previously. However, they would have all the roles I listed. So for example a small software development company could have one application development team leader who is also the data conversion expert and is also the technical architect and defines the required hardware for any project.

The owner might be the person responsible for checking costs are correct and for the sale and for assessing  the potential for further sales and the person who prepares the proposal.

The Right People Are The Right Number To Respond

In the end everyone who needs to be involved to produce a good proposal are the people who should be involved. And this is the “proposal team.”

If they can’t get involved think again about whether to respond to the proposal.

What Do They Want?

Before anything else the whole proposal team must read the proposal and consider if from their own area of expertise and then from any interactions they might need with other areas of the business.

The team should then meet to decide whether the prospect has worded the proposal to slant it towards a specific supplier – yes, it does happen! In which case you need to be very careful as to whether it’s worth replying with a proposal.

Also, if there’s a guide as to the expected price of the project the team need to decide whether it’s feasible to provide a solution at, or near, the price suggested.

Once the team has decided whether it’s worth producing a proposal they should discuss each element of the proposal and note whether any clarifying information is required from the prospect.

The second is to really understand what the prospect is looking for, both in the solution they’re searching for and also whether there is actually something else that is better that the proposal team’s expertise can assist with. This process also tends to throw up questions.

Using Clarifying Questions

Then there are two ways of dealing with clarifying questions. The easiest is for the sales staff and appropriate representatives of the proposal team to visit the prospect and ask them and any others that may crop up from the replies.

Meeting the prospect is almost always the best choice as it allows you to demonstrate interest in the project and to show you’ve considered it thoroughly and to deepen the relationship with the prospect

The other choice is to contact the prospect via fax or email or through a joint supplier meeting or meeting a single representative of the company. None of these is ideal as other companies often find out the questions you’ve asked when they’re documented.

In my next post I’ll write about what we need to produce a proposal and how we can deliver the solution.

Table of contents for Better Proposal Writing

1. 10 Questions To Create A Great Proposal
2. Proposal Teams – Who’s In Them?

The key questions to ask to produce a great proposal are as follows:

1. Where’s It Come From?
2. Are We In?
3. Who’s Involved?
4. What Do They Want?
5. What Do We Need?
6. How Can We Deliver?
7. Who Should Deliver?
8. When Do We Need to deliver
9. What Do We Deliver
10. Where Do We Deliver

Let me explain them a little further…

Where’s It Come From?

Where a Request for Information or Tender comes from is very important. If it comes from a journal such as OJEC in Europe it requires much more effort than if it comes from a current client who is not looking elsewhere for the work to be done and just wants a rundown of what is needed and the costs.

If it’s a response from a previous customer it may be treated differently to a current customer, or to a prospect you’ve been trying to deal with for years.

The source dictates how much resource and effort you need to put into the next 9 questions.

Are We In?

The very first question to ask is whether we actually want to commit our time and resources to answer the request for information (RFI) or reply to a tender. For example,if we lack industry knowledge that makes it impossible for us to deliver there’s no point in putting effort into responding.

Also, will the prospect meet with you if you’ve queries is an important point as there’s usually some questions that are best answered by face to face meetings.

It’s rare that one person in your company is responsible for making the “Are We In?” type of decision, so it’s best to have a meeting of all interested parties to decide. And if the decision is to go ahead the same group of people can answer many of the required questions.

If the decision is not to go ahead all that needs to be done is to document why, so the company can learn from the experience and also write a letter to the prospect thanking them and explaining why you’re not going to go further with the project.

And one thing to remember is that if the company you’re responding to dramatically changes their RFI or Tender request you may want to meet up again to see whether you wish to respond now.

In my next post I’ll write about who needs to be involved in replying to an Request for Information (RFI) or Tender.

The issue with project management is that these 3 main factors impact on each other:

1. Quality
2. Time
3. People

The Impact Of Increasing Deliverables

For example increasing deliverables but delivering in the same timescale will mean that tasks will need to be done more quickly or given to more people. If tasks are completed more quickly then you may have a problem with delivering the right quality.

Giving tasks to more people runs the risk of communication between the team breaking down or becoming more time consuming. The first will increase the risk of reduced quality. The second means that your timescales increase.

The new team members need to take time to learn about the project and their task before they can begin to be productive. There is an impact on the previous team members who are still trying to provide their part of the deliverable. They need to train or assist the new members to become productive. That means their deliverable timescales are affected too. Which means the likely delivery date will slip back.

What Happens If You Move The Deadline Nearer?

As sure as night follows day your deliverables change, either in quality, or in the number of deliverables that you can deliver if you make the deliverable due sooner.

As before you can increase the number of people allocated to creating the deliverables. Then you run the same risks as before, with the impact that you may still overshoot the new deadline.

The only way to deliver sooner than originally planned is to drop parts of the original deliverable or deliverables or to reduce the quality level.

Changing People During A Project Can Be Disastrous

If you’ve come to rely on the team you’ve built up to deliver the project changing any one of them can become a major issue. And it’s the same for you if a supplier changes the person they’ve provided for you as a liaison.

If a team member is taken off the project, for whatever reason, you’ve pretty much lost all access to the knowledge they’ve built up during the project. They may be willing to give you some time, but it wont be enough and any handover is unlikely to cover areas that come up later in the project!

What To Do About Project Issues

It’s not all bad news though there are some strategies you can implement to minimise these sorts of problems. And I’ll talk about these in a later post.

And by the way if you think you don’t run projects you’re not in business you’ve a hobby!