Yes, Proposals Are Agile—Here's What We've Learned
Six weeks ago, I posted an article that discussed how
proposal management is in actuality project management. I pointed out how our
long-standing proposal best practices are Agile,
and have been Agile long before Agile was the latest industry craze. The
article sparked some incredibly insightful feedback and discussions, and so I
spent the following weeks building on some of those discussion points in a
series of articles focused on how we can expand the application of Agile in our
opportunity pursuit processes.
First, I discussed the role of stakeholders and explored how we can better integrate stakeholders into the business
development lifecycle. Then I looked at Scrum,
how our proposal best practices fit into the Scrum model, and how we can learn
further from Agile ideologies to improve our proposal processes. Next, I
explored some common Agile tools,
and discussed how we might apply them to increase the efficiency of our proposal
processes. In the following weeks, I looked at unique challenges that we face in proposals, highlighted the implications, and discussed how we
must adapt to be successful. In my final article of this series, I’ll put it
all together and summarize the key takeaways from this incredible online
discussion.
Proposals Really Are
Agile
There is no doubt that our tried and true proposal best
practices are Agile and have been Agile long before Agile was the latest
industry craze. We have long embraced small, dedicated teams; short iterations;
and iterative review cycles. And although “Agile Proposal Development” may be a
new term, it is certainly not a new process or methodology. Most of us have
been practicing Agile Proposal Development our entire careers.
Proposals Follow the
Scrum Framework
Scrum is a specific Agile framework that supports effective
team collaboration on complex products. A Scrum is comprised of short
iterations, called sprints, within which work is completed iteratively. Sprints
are a period—typically 1 – 4 weeks long—when the development team produces the
next increment of the product (in our case, the proposal). And following this
logic, sprints are just the writing and development process that occurs between
each color team review.
Continuous
Stakeholder Feedback Is Key
Agile prioritizes iterative feedback from stakeholders and
customers. And since source selection rules put significant restrictions on
customer communications during the Final RFP phase, to increase our
probabilities of win, we need to collaborate with our customer stakeholders
frequently and early—and well before the RFP is released. Once the RFP is
released, we need to take full advantage of the Questions and Answers period. We
must also simulate the customer’s evaluation as part of our review cycles.
Similarly, to minimize the hurdles of getting the proposal
out the door, we need to collaborate with our internal stakeholders early and
frequently as well. For the best results, internal stakeholders need to be
involved throughout the opportunity pursuit process. It is essential to gain
internal stakeholder buy-in at critical milestones, including pursuit decisions,
strategy reviews, color team reviews, as well as formal milestone/gate reviews.
There Are Areas We
Can Do Better
Agile focuses on continuous improvement, and with proposals,
there are definitely areas where we can improve. Keeping stand-ups short and
sweet will bring the meetings back to their original purpose and provide the
proposal development team with more productive time. Encouraging more of a
collaborative environment during our color team reviews can help foster a more
positive morale and transform reviews into working sessions, rather than a
series of monologues and attacks. Making time for regular retrospective/lessons
learned meetings can help the team to increase effectiveness and efficiency by
continuously learning and improving.
By integrating Agile tools like Task Boards and Burn Down
Charts, we can further increase the effectiveness of our proposal development
process. With these tools, we will have a much clearer picture of what tasks
are in progress and whether they will likely be completed on time; what tasks
have been completed and whether they were completed on time; and perhaps most
critically, what hurdles might be preventing the team from meeting its sprint (color
team) and/or final delivery goal.
Final Thoughts
As we’ve pointed out over the last several weeks, with
Agile, success stems from iterative development, collaboration, and regular
stakeholder feedback—and it’s no different with proposals. As our tried and
true best practices have shown, this iterative development, collaboration, and
regular stakeholder feedback supports a successful proposal development
process. However, as we have also highlighted over the last several weeks,
Agile stresses continuous improvement, and there are definitely areas where we
can still improve.
I have sincerely enjoyed this discussion over the last
several weeks, and I am hopeful that the dialogue will continue in industry and
within our individual organizations. I hope we will all continue to be Agile in
our proposal pursuit processes, that we will continue to share our best
practices and lessons learned, and that we will all further embrace Agile
ideologies and continue to improve.
Written by Ashley Kayes, CP APMP
Senior Proposal Consultant, AOC Key Solutions, Inc. (KSI)
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