Proposal Writing Blog Series, Day 3: Management Approach

This is part of a five-day blog series on how to write a winning proposal. It will go discuss actually writing the proposal. If you want to get more in-depth information, examples, and what to do before the proposal, check out my “How to Write a Winning Proposal” handbook.

We have discussed the Cover Letter and the Executive Summary. We now get to the first main section: The Management Approach. I’ve written project plans for various projects. The Management Approach is a similar concept. This is where you assure the organization that if you win the proposal, you have a plan in place that will monitor the project to ensure that it remains on time, within cost, and on task. The Management Approach usually contains the following areas:

• Program Management Approach
• Roles and Responsibilities
• Resumes
• Program Monitoring
• Program Schedule and Timeline
• Contract Deliverables
• Training

Program Management Approach

In this sub-section, you let the organization know the way that you will manage the project. There are several ways to do it:

• If the organization wants to be aware of everything occurring with the project, then you want to ensure them that you will be working closely with them to do this.
• If the organization is more hands off, then you want to let them know that you have experienced project managers who will be on top of things.
• If the organization wants to have more of a team environment, then you want to ensure them that you have the proper team to ensure the project is successful.

Roles and Responsibilities

The roles and responsibilities are important for the success of the program, so you have to show the organization that you have setup the best team to ensure that this happens. A great way to make it visually easier for the organization to see roles and responsibilities is by placing them in a tabular view. The table column headings you want to have are the following:

• Role – The job role title
• Description -A high-level summary of the user role
• Responsibilities -A bulleted list of the main responsibilities that role will perform.

Unless the RFP, or Statement of Work, wants the resumes as a separate section, you want to place the resumes in this sub-section.

Program Monitoring

In this sub-section, you discuss how you will monitor the project to resolve any issues that might come along. Some of the things that you might mention in this area are if you have any kind of review process in place. Also, will you be providing weekly and/or monthly progress reports to the organization?

Program Schedule and Timeline

An organization is not going to expect you to have a detailed project schedule on a proposal. However, you want to have some preliminary sketch of what is to be expected. You want to show the organization that you put some thought in the most effective schedule for the implementation of the solution.

Contract Deliverables

Documentation is very important in any project. Therefore, you want to tell the organization that you will have some documents that you will deliver to them. There are standard documents that you will more than likely have on your list. Here are a few:

• Project Management documents (e.g. project plan, training plan, configuration management plan, test plan, etc.)
• Risk and Action Items logs
• Progress Reports
• Quality Assurance Plan

Training

If users will need to be trained, then you want to write a brief summary about your intent on providing training, and a high-level description on how you plan on doing it. If you will be writing a separate training plan, please indicate that, and that you will be working alongside them in developing one.