I decided to go over lessons learned from my experience with several RFP projects over the last few years. I learned a lot from an excellent mentor and have added my own touches to create a process and documents that have been highly effective in a broad range of situations. This provides a form of RFP tutorial that is highly recommended for anyone going through one for the first time.
You can find it here: https://youtu.be/dx8vlSoUXs0
Whether you are an employee, entrepreneur, contractor, or other, there comes the point where you need to scale your abilities. We can only do so much on our own. Thus, the need for extending effectiveness arises as soon as we try to do anything of substance. The trick is in finding ways to train others to produce a quality that is close enough to ours.
It goes without saying that this problem is one faced by specialists and those in skilled positions. If your work is measured by time put in and the quality of your work is not a factor, then you scale by adding more resources. Thus, we can build assembly lines of low-skilled labor and scale that to create millions of products.
In the world of business and IT, there are very few low-skill positions (if any). There are a few positions that are low-skilled that amount to data entry, but even those often require knowledge and experience to get the job done faster or better. Therefore, to grow our business, we need to be able to develop our people. We need to find ways to peel off some of the skilled labor we do, convert it to something that takes less skill, and pass it on to someone else.
Good News. There is nothing new about needing to pass on skills to others or even the next generation. However, we do seem to forget about that as something that requires our attention. Our days are full, and we quickly fall into the trap of being “too busy” to think about how to delegate. We need only look back a few decades to see industries driven by apprentice programs. These were the first way we looked into scaling our skilled labor.
The first step in delegating those things that only you can do is to examine your tasks closely. There is often some form of “finishing touch” we put on our work while most of the functions could be done by anyone. Even a software developer can have someone else write their code. This procedure is quite a challenge as it amounts to putting your thoughts down in a document. Nevertheless, it can be done, and the process is an excellent insight into delegating almost any responsibility.
I recently wrote a tutorial on how to automate almost anything. The beautiful thing is that this process is practically the reverse. You have a method you follow as part of delivering a product or service. We can dissect it by reducing it to the steps we take. There will be steps that are hard to define like “think about the problem I am solving.” That is ok for now. We will parse that more another time.
Once we have the first pass of steps, there are going to be concrete actions, and probably some “magic happens here” areas where we struggle to define our process. Those specific actions are where we move next.
Those concrete actions are where we can most quickly scale out our process. The operations may require some level of skill. However, a well-defined task can be done with more ability through practice. We may be able to perform the work faster or at a higher quality than someone else. Fear not, that is a temporary setback. When we pull out that step and hand it off to someone else to do the work, we will also spend the time to review and assess their work. This is an investment in making the worker better at the task. At some point, we will be able to have our investment pay off in a job we can reliably hand off to another.
Once we have a task or two pulled out to hand off, we can work on adding more to that list. This allows us to scale as others do those tasks better (through training or experience) and as we take things off of our plate.
So, we define the actions we take, find some we can hand off, and then do so. We scale by repeating the process. Is it that simple? Yes, the procedure is not hard at all. It is the definition of the tasks that is often a challenge. Do not take my word for it. Where are you invaluable to your job? Spend some time to find at least one task you can hand to others and see how easy it is.
Sooner or later we all need to solicit proposals that provide solutions to a problem. This might be a request for an application, a service, or products. It should come as no surprise that an effective RFP process accurately defines the problem. However, there is more detail that makes up an effective RFP.
The challenge of a technical RFP is often the language required to create one. The technical staff provide input (or possibly the entire response) to an RFP, so it is essential to communicate to them directly. Miscommunication can make responses invalid or worse. However, the writers of the RFP are usually on the business side of the equation. This is not an insurmountable issue. It just requires attention to the details that matter to an IT solution.
The key is in the details. A problem definition needs to include these pieces to provide the context required for a solution rather than just an answer to a question. For example, an RFP that defines the problem as a need for a website with a “contact us” form is overly simple. There is no context for a useful solution. Think about how the details below can help respondents craft a more meaningful response.
These details may seem like providing too much information. Nevertheless, these provide context for the solution. These details will help the providers craft a solution that meets your needs.
As part of your RFP, you want to make sure you have the right people for the job. A good RFP document provides a lot of detail about your company so it is only fair to request details about the respondents as well. In a similar sense to the problem details, a good RFP requests several facts from the respondents.
Do not underestimate the value of your problem. If you have a strong enough desire for a solution to search for proposals, then make it worthwhile. Spend the time to properly detail your problem and allow for respondents to take their time in crafting a response. I hope these items have helped you create an RFP process that works for you and finds a perfect response.