This post was supposed to be continued "tomorrow" (see previous entry), but tomorrow has turned out to be quite a few days later. I've just been really busy getting ready for my trip to India -- lots of personal and work-related stuff to get done before I leave for the airport this afternoon.
Also, something nice. Anita Campbell of the Small Business Trends website did a PowerBlog Review of my blog. It's a really nice review, and I hope it will bring me more visitors.
In my previous post, I explained how I used Sections L and M of the RFP to begin creating my draft outline. The next step involves incorporating information from Section C (scope-of-work) into the second section of the outline -- the Technical Approach and Methodology section.
To do this, I've got to go back and read Section C several times. On the first reading, I sort of skim through it. I read it more carefully the second time. Then, on the third reading I look for what might constitute major subheadings and sub-subheadings for my outline. This isn't easy. Because of the way in which Section C is organized, I am having trouble identifying what the RFP is asking the contractor to do. Nevertheless, I plug away at it. I copy and paste relevant sentences and paragraphs from the RFP into Section 2 of my outline and try to organize them into something that makes sense. When I'm done, I have a bunch of possible subheadings and bulleted points that I might need to do something with. It's starting to look like an outline, but I'm still not sure that I'm headed in the right direction.
So back to the RFP for a fourth reading. Ugh -- I'm getting sick of looking at this scope-of-work. But during this reading, I find that I've made a major error in my outline, because I've included items that are not actually contractor tasks; rather these items are really background information. I go back to my outline and delete all of the items that shouldn't be there. This makes Section 2 of outline smaller and more manageable. I make some revisions and reorganize things a little more until I have something I'm fairly satisfied with. My last step is to go back to Sections L and M to check to see if I've incorporated all relevant information from those sections into my Technical Approach and Methodology Section. Finally, the draft outline is done. It's taken me nearly 5 hours to do the whole outline, and we are talking a draft here -- there will surely be revisions as the proposal progresses. But it's a good start and I feel confident in sending it off to my client.
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