Readiness review #2: scoring sheet

The following scoring sheet summarizes the questions to be answered, action items to be accomplished, and goals to be achieved for this review. Each one should be assessed to determine if the pursuit is on track to be ready to win at RFP release.

 

Question, Action Item, or Goal	Guidance	Score
Opportunity Intel
Describe the scope/customer requirements in detail. What do you anticipate will be included or excluded?	Include everything necessary to estimate the level of effort to fulfill the requirement. These typically include minimum/maximum quantities, and the type of work that is included/excluded.	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What do you plan to do to influence the requirements?	What can you do to influence the scope, requirements, evaluation criteria, etc. in your favor?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
Are there any gaps between the requirements and your company’s capabilities?	Is there anything required that you can’t or don’t want to do?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What are the anticipated locations of work?	Will the project require work at more than one location? If so, where?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What do you know about the customer’s acquisition strategy?	What method will the customer use to conduct the acquisition? RFP, Task Order, schedule, contract vehicle, etc. Will the customer use a sources sought notice, draft RFP, or other approach to help finalize the RFP? How many bidders is the customer seeking?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What are you doing to influence the customer’s acquisition strategy?	What can you do to influence the type of contract, contract vehicle, small business requirements, procurement procedures, etc., in your favor?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What is the estimated value of the opportunity?	If you can’t estimate the value in dollars, do it in the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) positions, number of units, or some other measure.	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What is the potential budget and what have you done to influence it? Is the budget funded/ approved?	If the customer doesn’t have a budget and if the budget isn’t funded/approved then the opportunity may never see the light of day… However, if can reach the customer before their budget has been approved, you still have a chance to influence it. You customer may need help determining what a rational budget should be. After all you are the experts...	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What objections, problems, reasons, or limitations might prevent the customer from completing the procurement?	What are the chances of this opportunity being cancelled? What can you do to prevent that or overcome the challenges?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What procurement milestones, decisions, and events, should be anticipated?	What steps will the procurement go through? What should you expect, anticipate, or be prepared for?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
Does the customer understand how to write the RFP and make a selection? What can you do to help?	Often the customer’s technical staff is told to write an RFP by their procurement specialists or customer policy. Often, they don’t know how to write a good RFP. While you can’t write the RFP for them, you can supply them with information regarding what is important, how to mitigate risks, etc. It is a good idea to supply this information in a format that makes it easy to copy and paste…	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
Customer Intel
What is the status of your contact plan?	Your contact plan should now be implemented. What is your progress towards fulfilling it?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
Does the customer have questions or need information you can provide?	The customer may not know the best way to achieve their goals. They may not know what is feasible. You should be as helpful as possible to help them get into position to make a procurement.	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What do you know about the customer’s preferences?	You need to decide your technical/management approaches and select platforms/standard. You will be faced with making trade-offs. You want you decisions to reflect the customer’s preferences.	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
How does the customer make decisions?	Does the customer have a process for making procurement decisions? Do they require a consensus? Do they have one? At what level are decisions made? What contacts do you have at that level?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What is the customer’s procurement process	What steps, events, or milestones must be completed for the customer to release the RFP? What approvals are required? Is there any way you can assist the customer or influence the RFP?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What relevant policies, procedures, manuals, rules, and regulations, can you obtain copies of?	It helps to know the customers policies and procedures better than they do themselves? This information is often publicly available. Do you have copies and have you studied them?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
Competitive Intel
Who are the other potential bidders and what do you know about them?	In addition to companies performing similar work at the customer, potential competitors include companies with similar capabilities/qualifications and companies who wish to grow their business with the customer or service area.	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What scope of work gaps does each competitor have?	Before you can position yourself against the competition, you have to know where they are vulnerable. What aspects of the project will they have difficulty with or need to outsource?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
Should you team or bid alone and why?	Sometimes it is better to pursue an opportunity with other companies as partners or subcontractors. Sometimes it is better to bid alone. Which is the right approach for this opportunity and why?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
If you should team, who should it be with and why?	You can team with other companies to fill a capability gap, to strengthen a capability, to meet a small business requirement, to bring something unique to the customer, to bring experience, to bring resources, to bring a reputation, to mitigate risks, or even to take someone off the street instead of competing with them. You should be selective in choosing teaming partners. Who do you recommend teaming with and why?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What are your competitive advantages?	You never want an even playing field. What gives you an advantage over the competition, and what are you doing to widen the gap?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
Business Line Specific
What information do you need to determine if the what the customer wants is feasible?	It’s not a valid lead if what the customer wants can’t be done, delivered, or provided.	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What information do you need to properly estimate and specify your offering?	What information do you need that is specific to your business? It could be technical or related to locations, volume, staffing, requirements, scope, etc.	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
How is the opportunity related to your company or business unit’s strategic plans?	Not all leads are relevant to the direction the company wishes to go in. Is this lead relevant?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
Do you plan to provide any demonstrations, do any prototyping or development, or attend any relevant events?	Do you need to develop and prototypes or provide demonstrations so that the customer can see your offering or to put you into a better position for being able to deliver quickly? Are there any events where you can get in front of the customer?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
Self-Awareness and Resources
Has a Capture Manager been identified yet?	Before the next review you will need to have the Capture Manager in place and up to speed. Has one been identified yet?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
If your company has a bid/no-bid process, are you prepared for it?	Even though the CapturePlanning.com MustWin Process incorporates bid/no-bid considerations, many companies have an established bid/no-bid review that you will still need to comply with. If your company has an existing formal bid/no-bid procedure, do you know what you need to do to comply with it?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
Are there any contracting issues, policies, or procedures that should be incorporated into your efforts to influence the customer/RFP?	Because government contracts are highly regulated, you should review your efforts to influence the customer and RFP with a contracts specialist. Even in commercial procurements it is a good idea to do this.	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
Other Intel
Describe any additional intelligence collected	Links, attachments, or external references to customer documents or other materials are encouraged.	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
Assessment
Is the pursuit worth further investment?	Is the lead promising enough to make it worth the investment of taking to the next Readiness Review?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
Is this opportunity on track, for being ready to win at the time of RFP release?	Since this is the first review, there is time to collect more information. Is it off to the right start?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
Are you on track for developing an information advantage?	You can measure the strength of your customer relationship by how much it provides an information advantage over your competitiors.	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What issues or challenges need to be overcome?	Do you perceive issues that need to be addressed during future future Readiness Reviews? List or attach them so they can be tracked.	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What additional questions would you like answered before the RFP is released?	List or attach any questions that you would like added to the list so they can be tracked.	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
What action items do you recommend completing before the next review?	List or attach anything you would like done before the next review so they can be tracked.	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green
Do you have any other comments, suggestions, guidance, or direction to offer?	In addition to assessing progress, the purpose of Readiness Reviews is to help ensure that the pursuit is ready to win at RFP release. What can you do to help?	❏  Red ❏  Yellow ❏  Green

 

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