Nationally, we spend 250 billion dollars on software development. Yet 83% of these projects are canceled, late and/or over-budget. --James P. Lewis, "Fundamentals of Project Management"
We receive RFPs on a weekly basis. The majority are so awful they hit the trash, but the real tragedy is that a bad RFP creates confusion, clutter and cost. Ron shared an RFP he got that made me laugh so hard I almost fell out of my chair.
But as a company with a web design project, they need a process that allows review and screening. They have to do something! Most companies don't realize the RFP process itself loses them the cream of development talent because the best developers have no need to spend hours bidding on projects. They are being courted, bonused and enticed to work on projects. Bordering on begging; very embarrassing to witness. The need something to avoid bad input leading to bad planning, implementation and product.
So let's build them the tools to properly frame their request in a way that doesn't require a 10-50 hour investment from us to get work. We're thinking about a standardized Drupal RFP that a developer would love to bid on, work on and produce. There's definitely room for an ideal RFP process to create order into a chaotic world. We'd love your feedback on these and any other points you'd like to make:
--What information is always missing & leads to bad process/project mgmt?
--What causes project headaches for you?
--If you've managed a project, what do you wish you had done differently?
--What structure, documentation, assets were missing?
--What would it have taken to make your project succeed?
--Do you even bother with RFPs?
If you write back, we'll provide you a sneak preview of the results! See everyone next meeting on May 12th. I'll be talking about this topic and also Lynda.com training for the SDUG. Thanks!