Responding to an RFP .... Steps1 and 2

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Are you a proposal leader tasked with responding to a competitive RFP?

• An RFP from a private sector customer or from the public sector?
• And if from the public sector, local, state, or federal?
• And if from the federals, defense or non-defense?

Every one of those customer groups will have their own style, culture, and constraining rules, regulations, and statutes. But even so, there are two steps, everyone must follow:

Step 1, Read the RFP

Step 1 is to read the entire RFP, but most particularly read the "instructions to offerors", or words to that effect. This seems like such an obvious first step that it does not bear mentioning, but actually it does because the devil is in the detail. 

Follow instructions

If you can't follow instructions as simple as how to submit the proposal, or worse: you are too lazy or arrogant to read and follow the instructions, then you've made an unforced error which could cast a pawl over you whole proposal. 

Take note of Customer dictates

Many submission requirements require "click to sign" certifications (which brings workflow and signature authority into the frame), and they require online submissions of content segmented by "attach here" this or that. Consequently, you may need a tool or submission facility that is not your norm. Action required to get the tools the customer uses!

Avoid disqualification.

Or, worst case, if you don't follow instructions, including "don't be late", you could be disqualified for an unresponsive submission. 

Step 2, Have an Answer for everything

Step 2 is build a tracking matrix (or table, or several tables by category) for every little thing that is in the RFP. Use the tracking matrix (or table) to organize and direct where in your proposal the customer is going to find answers. 

Don't disdain a customer's laundry list which looks like the customer just threw mud at the wall. Everything goes in a tracking matrix. Some of that mud has may have an influential sponsor; you won't really know who's looking for an answer, so answer everything. 

There are two objectives to be satisfied with these tracking tables:

1. Assure completeness, which is part and parcel to your first demonstration to the customer of your appreciation of quality assurance.
   The customer will notice omissions more readily than inclusions.
   That is simple utility theory which posits asymmetry of value: the missing is more grievous than the satisfaction of inclusions.
   
   
2. Make it easy for the customer to find the answers. A frustrated customer, looking here and there but not finding, or not finding easily, will take it out on your score.
   Making it easy are the easiest evaluation points you can earn. Don't give them away. 
   
   Remember this: If the customer can't find what they want in your proposal, it's not their fault!  (Corollary: If it's not their fault, then it must be yours!) You can't admonish them for not being able to read and easily digest your responses.

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Chief A.I. Officer

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So it didn't take long. 

AI has invaded the C-Suite, the latest title being Chief A.I. Officer, aka CAIO.

The job description is partly directed at technology, partly directed at culture, and partly directed at functional impacts, like HR, recruiting, and intellectual property.

What does it mean to project management?

In the PMO, the CAIO is going to be there to help you! (I'm from HQ, and I'm here to help)

• Safety and security: Every project's use or application of AI has safety and security on the project risk register or project agenda. Safety insofar as user's experiences are concerned re exposure to unintended content or performance or functionality. Security insofar as exposing user's to security holes for what seems like an ever expanding range of attacks.
  
  
• HR effects: Predictions are that AI tools will be more threatening to white collar college educated professionals than Joe-the-plumber and other hands-on trades which are not robotic. So will you be under pressure to replace your favorite project professionals with an AI device?
  
  
• Recruiting: What do you tell recruits about your project and enterprise culture re the oncoming AI thing? The fact is: whatever you say today is open to changes tomorrow. Stability and predictability in the job description is going to be a chancy thing.
  
  
• Intellectual property: IP is the source of a lot of enterprise value. But in the AI world, who owns what, especially derivatives from "fair use". And, of course, the patent mess, and the local, state, and federal statutory baseline (admittedly, slow moving, but moving nonetheless; got to keep up!) 

Suffice to say: It's not your father's PMO anymore!

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3 E's drive success

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Lee Cockerell, a retired Disney executive and author of several successful business books, says this about the people you want on your project: 

• Hire and retain people who value "reliability" in commitments and relationships, and 
• Hire and retain people who value the "3 E's" (or maybe it's 4 E's)

Education + Exposure + Experience = Excellence

Cockerell's points should be self evident:

• People who are committed to their task, organization, or even to their colleagues and supervisors show that commitment by deed, to wit: they show up, on time in the right place, in a state of readiness to do the work of the day. And they make an effort to be a reliable, contributing partner during the work process.
  
  
• Education (and the related professional credentials) are not enough. It's also not enough to work (and even live) in the same company, job, and location for a career. Of course, who does that anymore? Exposure to other lifestyles, culture, work environments ... foreign and domestic ... in combination with the experience of actually doing the job is that leads to "excellence".
  
  
• And the most successful among us are those who place great importance and value on "excellence". And so continuing education ... formal and informal ... purposeful exposure, and time-over-target (experience) are the 'work-on-everyday' elements of achieving excellence.

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Like this blog? You'll like my books also! Buy them at any online book retailer!

10,000 project interns

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David Miessiler has this idea about AI tools that are "good enough" to make a real project impact. He says, in part:

 

To me .... in both offensive and defensive security use cases, the main advantage of AI will not be its exceptional (superhuman) capabilities, but rather the ability to apply pretty-good-intern or moderate-SME level expertise to billions more analysis points than before.

In large companies or government/military applications, we often don’t need AGI [artificial general intelligence]. What we need is 10, 100, or 100,000 extra interns.

Talk about job elimination! It could happen. 

But the impact on testing, especially those rare use cases that nobody wants to test for because there's never enough time and money for the 6-sigma outcomes, will be profound! Quality should go up faster than the cost of quality (which is, of course, "free") 

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Andreessen opines AI

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When Marc Andreessen speaks, it's worth your time to listen. He says this about AI

[A] short description of what AI is: The application of mathematics and software code to teach computers how to understand, synthesize, and generate knowledge in ways similar to how people do it.

AI is a computer program like any other – it runs, takes input, processes, and generates output. AI’s output is useful across a wide range of fields, ranging from coding to medicine to law to the creative arts.

It is owned by people and controlled by people, like any other technology.

An even shorter description of what AI could be:
A way to make everything we care about better.

He goes on:
The most validated core conclusion of social science across many decades and thousands of studies is that human intelligence makes a very broad range of life outcomes better..... 

 Further, human intelligence is the lever that we have used for millennia to create the world we live in today: science, technology, math, physics, chemistry, medicine, energy, construction, transportation, communication, art, music, culture, philosophy, ethics, morality..... 

 What AI offers us is the opportunity to profoundly augment human intelligence to make all of these outcomes of intelligence – and many others .... much, much better from here.

Doing a bit of strategy

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Consider this military wit, and put it in the context of a PMO.  

"There is an old—and misleading—bit of conventional military wisdom which holds that “amateurs study tactics, while professionals study logistics.”

The truth is that amateurs study only tactics or logistics, while professionals study both simultaneously.

The most brilliant tactics ever devised are pointless when the supplies needed to execute them do not exist, while all the supplies in the world are useless when a commanding officer has no idea how to effectively employ them."

Quote from "Field Marshal: The Life and Death of Erwin Rommel"

by Daniel Allen Butler

Are you the professional or the amateur?

Consider what are "logistics" in the project domain:

• Supplies and materials, of course
• Utilities, communications, and facilities (you gotta sit somewhere)
• Tools and training
• Supporting activity from Finance and Accounting (they have the money!) 
• Supporting activity from purchasing, inventory management, and receiving (they have the goods!)
• Supporting activities from the various "ilities"

If you can get that wagon train all connected and working for you, then of course there is the small matter of strategy:

• How strategic are you? Anything less than a year probably qualifies as tactics. Anything over three years and you should build in some tolerance for some business instability.
• What is the lay-line to your strategic goal, and of course, what is your goal?
• How much deviation from the lay-line can you tolerate for agile tactics (zig and zag along the lay-line)
• Can you be strategic on some elements of the 'balanced scorecard' and simultaneously tactical on others(*)?

Got all of the above together? 

Good. Now(!) you can entertain tactical moves, knowing the support is there.

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(*) Balanced scorecard: Finance, Customer, Product, and Operating Efficiency