My Work Log

Here are some of the activities which are normally done before a project begins.  It may not be exhaustive …………..but at least its close.  Its certainly not the bookish PMBOK stuff.  These activities are part of a non-competitive bid – where the customer is already the captive of a service organization and you are initiating a new project.

Principally after the discussions and due diligence/requirements gathering of the project you come up with your findings – which could be in the form of a set of requirement gathering artifacts or due diligence findings.  After you get the acceptance and signoff from the customer for these artifacts here is what you would do:

The proposal would have three parts to it which are:

The Technical Proposal is generally prepared by the Pre-sales team with inputs from the architects and the infrastructure teams.  While the architecture team would create the technical architecture document – and provide the list of software needed for the system ………….the infrastructure team would use these as inputs to come up with the list of hardware for the system.    The infra guys would also need the loading information for the system and the scalability needs to determine the configuration of the hardware needed. 

The procurement team would also be contacted to get the prices of the hardware and the software.

The Commercial Proposal would also be created by the pre-sales team and would be whetted by the finance guys.  An earlier blog posting already covers the various aspects of a commercial proposal.

The contract would be finalized with huge inputs from the legal team.  They would provide templates based on the context and finally approve the finalized document.

A senior team of managers would review the overall proposal along with the sales, finance and legal teams.  Once the approval is procured from all it would be sent to the client for their review.

The client would be sent the above artifacts to give them time to review these.

The service organization team would discuss the proposal with the client either across the table or through telephonic means.  Once the various areas are settled – then the proposal would be finalized.  Typically the sales team would negotiate the commercial and legal aspects – while the delivery team would discuss the technical aspects.

Once the proposal has been finalized the client would issue the project order to the service organization.  This would generally provide the price the customer has finally agreed to along with references to other terms/conditions and legal paraphernalia.

This is something which is internal to the service organization.  Once the proposal preparation has been  initiated – the team readiness is something which kicks off in parallel.  This has many sub-aspects

A workshop involving all stakeholders within the service organization has to be arranged – which would typically present what was done earlier and what needs to be done next, who will own what and within what timelines, the project flow etc.   It will also prepare the entire team for the kickoff meeting.

This has to be done with the customer in view.  An agenda has to be circulated along with necessary supporting artifacts to the customer to prepare for the kickoff

Necessary resources who have to travel onsite would do so for the project start.

This meeting will have all customer and service organization stakeholders and map the way forward.  This would happen typically two days after the resources arrive at the client location.

The kickoff meeting will identify who among the customer – will lead and what the communication model is (when the status calls will be, escalation model, processes etc.).  It will also identify what the expected deliverables are and what the timelines would be.  What the customer responsibilities are and what the vendor responsibilities are (while already decided) would be clearly enunciated.

The project then starts