By 
Did you know that according to Project Management Professional and Measure Up, almost 80% of project failure are because the PM’s failed to execute management decisions successfully? This could be an issue in even the most efficient and savvy managers, we know that to handle a critical function we are going to have to make use of many different tools, techniques, and approaches. As on a prince 2 Training Course London.
The most important task in managing a project is adequate proposal planning, the next is your ability to strategically assign resources, and then you need to take a very diligent approach towards the entire proposal planning process. Just like a project may have to be evaluated against many different factors, these same essential elements need to be reviewed and analyzed by an experienced party as you move forward with the entire project.
To further analyze the flow and progression of the process, at the request of the client, my team members and I have created a comprehensive list of four metrics that can be used as starters to monitor and measure the full proposal process.
First:”Research” Metric:The first metric we discovered was to track the scope of the project in terms of the level of significance and urgency. How urgent is this particular client? Is this a normal client or is it absolutely important to get this job done as fast as possible? This provides the PM with data that is vital in determining and devising a solution for difficulty.
Second:”Scope Management” Metric:The second metric we discovered was to track the completed scope of the finished proposal. After the PMs have developed their overall approach to the job, they must prioritize the various components of a proposal. Did you know that only 3-4 major components are the most critical components for a proposal, while the remaining components are either secondary, or tertiary?
Third:”Compile & Review” Metric:The third metric was to track how many deliverable deliverables were drafted with a 2,000 word document. Did you also know that 90% of proposals don’t go into the final form after editing?
Finally:”Proposal Writing” Metric:The final metric was to track the completion of the first draft of the proposal and to ensure that there is no re-work that must be done after it is approved.
As you can see with the use of such metrics bullet points, it is fairly easy to identify the different stages a proposal goes through. If you already have a strong Extranet or MS Project file, you can even track how much time was spent on each section and by how much. Additionally, from the metrics we found that even though the customer data file contained a complete list of all requester names and contact info, we had to look into our MS project file to get the data or we had to create a rectangular list in MS to get the data.
With these metrics, I urge you to look at your current processes and make sure that you have a system in place to manage your proposals. From my experience, most companies spend too much time getting to the end of a proposal and never once get them out of the way. It is about time that you put a system in place to get as close as possible to the end of the process. If you decide you like it, sign up for PMI’s project management course and learn about the advanced processes of proposal management as well as techniques on how to review your proposal as you pass it around. You will be glad you did!
Comments