Drupal Dojo Session: IT WILL BE OK, PUT DOWN THE RFP AND STEP AWAY

Posted by Advomatic on August 4, 2010 at 7:30pm

Start:

2010-08-10 12:30 - 13:30 America/New_York

Organizers:

dougvann

Advomatic

gusaus

Event type:

Online meeting (eg. IRC meeting)

RFPs have been integral to building Drupal websites for a long time. And they suck. They hurt everyone. The Client, The Developer, The End Product all suffer at the hands of the RFPs.

Everyone loses.

Developers lose by having to do free work to analyze (and guess) the clients site needs, invest tons of time in proposals they probably won't win, and when they do win, they lose anyways when the client gets through discovery and realizes they wanted something entirely different, gets angry at the scope and budget changes, and gets hostile to the developer. Or the Developer builds the site as originally intended, but the client changes things all along the way, increasing the budget incrementally, and then at the end the client is furious that the budget exploded.

Clients lose by not doing a proper discovery phase to learn their needs before they issue an RFP. They lose when their expectations are completely shattered by a fundamentally dishonest (unintentionally) process that leads them to be on the losing end of scope creep and budget changes. They lose when they base everything on the bottom line, rather than the quality of the partner they choose.

There is a better way. It's harder for a freelancer, but it can be done. Lets talk about it. And help clients, developers, and websites in the process. So everyone can win.

Register to Attend here - https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/696008857

Adam Mordecai
Partner - Advomatic, LLC
Drupal Development, Managed Hosting & Maintenance

Comments

Good topic!

Posted by ultimike on August 5, 2010 at 11:40am

Not sure I can attend the live event, I'm assuming it will be recorded and posted?

-mike

Sessions indeed recorded and posted

Posted by gusaus on August 5, 2010 at 3:40pm

We record and post the weekly Building with Drupal sessions here:

http://drupaldojo.com/sessions
http://drupaldojo.blip.tv/

In addition, www.drupaldojo.com will soon be aggregating/curating videos and learning materials from other sources.

I'm quite excited about this session too!!

Gus Austin

Everybody hates RFPs

Posted by dwalper on August 5, 2010 at 9:49pm

...but if you think you are going to escape them, you're sorely mistaken!

As you do larger projects, particularly with governments and public agencies where the RFP process is mandated by law, you're only going to have more to do. Accept this. Get really good at selling yourself and your uniqueness in your proposals.

However, that doesn't mean you should just let your potential future client set the agenda without proper consultation. Most of them do a discovery process in order to come up with an RFP, you just aren't the one doing it for them! Fix this and your odds of success go up dramatically.

In some cases it's not permitted for you to help them draft the requirements and also bid on the RFP. In these cases, well, either don't bid or do whatever you can to add a ton of value to your proposal. Plan for significant up-front time getting the details right and understanding their needs so you don't get into the kind of situation everyone hates (scope creep, budget overruns, etc.)

RFPs are here to stay! Get used to them... get good at them :-)

-Dustin

Yes

Posted by Advomatic on August 7, 2010 at 3:50pm

My session will cover this. There will be times that you have no choice, but my goal with this session is to teach people how to stop as many as possible, push to change the ones they can't, and avoid the ones they have no chance of winning.

Look forward to discussing it with everyone!

Advomatic
Drupal Development, Drupal Maintenance and Drupal Hosting

Some of the things that were mentioned

Posted by Advomatic on August 10, 2010 at 6:52pm

Resources for developers:
http://www.winwithoutpitching.com/
http://www.winwithoutpitching.com/manifesto?toc

Resources for clients:
http://nten.org/ntc
http://www.advomatic.com/blogs/julie-blitzer/why-non-profits-need-user-e...
http://www.advomatic.com/blogs/julie-blitzer/nn10-report-how-to-plan-you...
http://www.advomatic.com/blogs/julie-blitzer/the-web-development-process...

We'll have the presentation video up soon.

Cheers, thanks for participating, and please, if you get the chance, tell me how to improve!
http://advomatic.com/norfp <-----Click Please!

Advomatic
Drupal Development, Drupal Maintenance and Drupal Hosting

Dojo session video posted

Posted by gusaus on August 11, 2010 at 2:24pm

Here are a couple places you can find it:
http://blip.tv/file/3991131
http://drupaldojo.com/session/it-will-be-ok-put-down-rfp-and-step-away

Note that we had some technical difficulties with the screensharing for the first few minutes of the session. All in all, this was a highly informative session and a topic we'll be revisiting.

Thanks again to Adam for doing it!

Gus Austin