Most of the project leaders are coming to a point in their project, where they have to provide initiate a process to select a suppliersupplier selection process.
What are the responsibilities of the project leader? What role is he playing himself in the decision making? What are the instruments, criteria he should consider?
Overall process to select a supplier
To make a good choice, it is important to plan the selection phase. The following steps must be carried out:
- Requirements definition
- Identification of potential suppliers
- Call for bids
- Selection of the supplier
- Contract administration
In this article, we will tackle the most important points about requirements definition, and in particular, the supplier assessment grid.
Role and responsibilities of the project leader
The project leader has to ensure that the process is efficient, effective and ethical, that it is implemented and followed. In concrete terms, when selecting a supplier:
- The process is effective if the selected supplier delivers the expected goods and services, those which will contribute to meeting the project goals and objectives.
- The process is efficient if the time allocated to the supplier is reasonable so they can provide quality responses to the call for bids.
- The process is ethical, if all suppliers get the same information and that the selection decision is made based on pre-established and objective criteria.
The responsibility of the project leader is to make sure that those three elements are considered during the planning of the selection process.
It is interesting to note that the project leader does not have to be involved neither in the supplier evaluation proper, nor in the selection of the candidates. He only has to make sure that the evaluation is performed by competent people.
Requirements definition vs. assessment grid
The first step is to define the requirements to the supplier. Those requirements are both functional – the supplier has to conform to a specific need – and non-functional – the supplier has to prove he is competent to fill the mandate. Precise and clear requirements avoid bad surprises down the road.
The assessment grid
The best way to select the best supplier is to define the decision criteria in advance, including:
- The acceptable minimum and/or maximum position. Supplier outside the limits are simply eliminated. For example, one can demand a certain delivery deadline, a maximal cost, a minimal number of customer references, or a must requirement, which must be met at 100%. Such requirements are considered as basic.
- An assessment grid with all the criteria and how to translate these into a score. Will the evaluation be made as a percentage, a value between 1 and 4, 1 and 10, etc.? It should be clear how to evaluate each criterion. For example, if the suppliers were asked to provide customer references, with a description of the project; the assessment grid could take into account the relevance of this project. If the project was practically identical, the maximum score is awarded (100%, 4, 10…). If the project is quite different, a low score is awarded, and so on. More specific assessment grids result in higher quality of evaluation.
- The weight of each criterion in relation with the others. Requirements do not have the same value. We already talked about the acceptable minima, those affecting the go/no-go. They normally have the same value for all suppliers passing this initial filter. A weighting must be defined for the remaining criteria. Most often, some technical requirements are more important than others.
In the end, the assessment grid allows to quickly compare the different suppliers. If this grid is prepared in parallel with the requirements definition, the RFP document will be more complete and the selection phase will be simplified.
Categories of Criteria
The assessment criteria, closely linked to the requirements, can belong to one of 5 categories:
- The quality of the responses to the RFP
- The depth of the supplier
- The past experience of the supplier
- Respect of the deadlines
- Cost of the goods and services
The quality of the responses
For each requirement, the response quality can be evaluated. Did the supplier understand? Is the proposed solution adequate? Is it clear the supplier knows what he is talking about? Does he understand the goals of the project?
The depth of the supplier
Next, the supplier’s technical competence can be evaluated. What is the profile of the individuals assigned to the project? Is the project team composition clear and firm? What is the size of the company? What is its production capacity? Can they run the project without over-committing themselves? How long do they exist for? Are they in a good financial situation? What kind of contracts do they have with their employees, are they permanent employees, contractual…? Was there a contact with the technical team or just with sales? What skills does the supplier have to manage his part of the project? Did we already work with this supplier? If yes, how did the other project leaders rate them?
The supplier’s past experience
Has the supplier already done similar projects? Are customer references available? How did their other customers rate them?
Respect of the deadlines
Are the proposed milestones realistic? Are they based on solid estimates? Are those estimates available?
Costs
What exactly is proposed by the supplier? Are the cost estimates reasonable? Can they allow the supplier to earn a decent (but not exaggerated) margin? Obviously, each project has its own assessment grid. From project to project, some criteria might not be needed, while new ones may have to be defined.
Last February 8th, I attended a conference organised by Rezonance in Geneva. The topic was “The Art of Storytelling: becoming a leader through stories” by John Sadowsky.
The main idea is to recognise that the human being loves stories, that he identifies better to a mission, an objective, if it is linked to a coherent and authentic story. During the conference, Mr. Sadowsky gave us a few examples of leaders who were able to bring others with them thanks to their ability to integrate a strong story in their message. For example, Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama, to mention the most famous.
I was drawn to this conference since I had the opportunity, many years ago, to attend a training course about using tales in the business world. Following this training, I wrote a story about my business at that time, which illustrated the path followed so far and our business mission. This tale, called “le royaume du tout possible” (only available in French) created a lot of enthusiasm within our team. From this experience, I saw that the idea was fundamentally a good one and, most importantly, that we could have a lot of fun working with it.
While listening to Mr. Sadowsky and after having read his book “Les sept règles du storytelling”, written in collaboration with Loïck Roche, I got to thinking about how this approach could be useful for project managers during the full project cycle.
Project initiation
In this phase, the application of the story concept is almost intuitive: instead of presenting a dry project charter, why not work out what it was in the initial idea that convinced the sponsor to finance the project, what he wants to achieve, not only in terms of numbers, but also in terms of his vision for the enterprise once the project is completed. One might imagine using some parables to make the whole story more colourful. If we follow Messrs. Sadowsky and Roche’s approach, the sponsor should look at his personal journey (rule no. 1), to create a story which fits with his personality (rule no. 2) and project himself into the future (rule no. 5).
Let’s take as a concrete example a case from a fictional customer of Marakoudja who wants to develop an internet site to take care of each user’s cooking recipes. According to the traditional process, the project manager would conduct a discussion with the customer and draw up the project charter. The result would show something like the following:
The project objective is to launch the French version of the website in September 2010 with the expected performance (to be defined during the concept phase) and including the following functionalities: recipe management, recipe search engine, additional tools (unit conversion, …). This project is part of the enterprise’s overall strategy to create a cooking advice social network. This strategy targets a break even for our business in July 2012. The concept and analysis phase of the project must be completed by June 30th, 2010.
While I do not question the importance of defining the objectives and the background of the project precisely and objectively, this information, which allows the project manager to understand the expectations, will not generate any enthusiasm. The idea is to use storytelling to complete this text – not to replace it – with a more personalised speech from the sponsor. It could be something like this:
Since the beginning of our marriage, my wife and I have been using recipes we collected here and there to plan the family meals. Over time, we have created a typical monthly menu which help us to be more efficient. Since the Internet has arrived, we are searching more and more often for new recipe ideas. Afterwards, when we want to add the ingredients to our shopping list, we cannot always remember where we found a recipe that we liked. We love to eat good and healthy food, but we do not want to take hours planning for the weekday meals. Things are even worse now, because with our children being teenagers, the number of people eating at each meal is extremely variable. I dream of a site where all families could easily create a weekly menu, which would fit their tastes and constraints, which would not always be the same and which would be able to automatically generate a grocery list.
Project concept and planning
It is time to detail, to elaborate on the project story, to add content, to better define the journey and most importantly to invite team members to join the story. The project manager must make the sponsor’s story his own, to stand with him so they can share the story. By doing so, he should apply rule no. 6 “personalise your stories” and rule no. 3: “involve the people you are working with”.
Here, I will not give you the traditional approach, eg our project manager will identify the needs, will prepare activity plans, will estimate the required efforts, costs, etc…. He will do these activities as far as possible in cooperation with the project stakeholders. With the storytelling approach, the project manager can take over the sponsor’s story and add his own personal touch to it. For example, he could start the need identification workshop like this:
We have come here together to discuss the project requirements to launch a web site which will allow families, similar to our President’s family, to eat well without losing excessive time in planning the family meals. I am myself very interested by this project since both my parents were working at 100%. I often saw them struggling to prepare a quick meal coming back from work. I remember the quick soup and cheese meals. I am looking forward to work on this project which will give me a way to do better with my own family. I am confident that you have similar experiences to share, what about starting exchanging about them and see how this web site could simplify our life?
By doing this exercise, everyone will identify himself with the project and concrete use cases will be defined. Of course, prioritisation will be needed between all the generated ideas and some of them will be kept for subsequent phases. But with such an approach, the stakeholders will be really interested and put their heart in the project since they will recognise themselves in it.
Project execution
Every project has its ups and downs. Why not using the project story to invent new avenues which will help the team to see that the final destination is still at reach – to understand that these are story chapters that you are writing together. During these active times in the project, it is important to follow rule no 4: “remain yourself”. Find the words, the way to tell the story which fits your personality.
While the project is in its execution phase, we don’t need as much storytelling creativity, but the project manager can use the examples given in the conception / planning phase to explain the project objective to newcomers.
For example, it was decided that users would be able to enter their own personal recipes. A young team member does not understand why somebody would take time to do that, since one can find all recipes on Internet. Traditionally, you could tell him: “this is a need which was defined, it is part of the project scope so we must do it.” Or, you could answer him this:
You know last week, I wanted to cook a chocolate cake. I remembered my grand-mother’s cake I was eating when I was a child. I checked Internet and found a recipe which looked similar. I prepared the cake, but it was not it. I finally found an aunt who still had the delicious recipe. You will not believe me, I was only missing one egg. That changed everything! This recipe, I would now like to keep it and add it to my personal cooking guide.
Project monitoring and control
Maybe will you find out that some activities do not bring expected results, that some team members do not understand the objectives and are taking wrong decisions. Why not revisit the story and simplify it, clarifying the journey and the destination? This is rule no 7 : “simplify – always”.
For example, you find out that the system performance is not defined in the acceptance criteria. You could go back to the IT team and just raise the issue and ask for it to be solved. Or, you organise a team meeting and say:
When we went through the system tests, we experienced that each screen refresh was taking many seconds. When we have defined the acceptance criteria, we thought that this system would be used while preparing the meal. I imagine myself in front of the stove, while the sauce is raising. I would have to wait many seconds to see what ingredient I have to add next. This would certainly not do and I would then probably decide to print the recipe. This is something we want to avoid with our site. Do you think you could improve on this?
It is possible to believe that the importance of this need will be better understood by the team and that she will have more motivation to find a solution.
Closing
That’s it, your project is completed. It’s lessons learned time. A project report which could be written like an adventurous tale! A dream for any reader, I am convinced. It’s time to put the finishing touch to your story, to add all these unexpected episodes while giving a role to each team member. This will make your project memorable for the next centuries!
Here is an extract that could have been taken from your report:
We were able to end this project in time and within budget. What I am the most proud of is seeing that we have all put a little bit of ourselves in it. This site would not have the success it has today without us sharing our personal stories. Our customers like the possibility to get the quantities by weight or by volume? Thanks to Nathalie who told us about her difficulties to cook a meal, one day, when her kitchen scale had disappeared. Our customers can translate their recipe in many languages? Thanks to Joseph who told us about his mother who could not read French. And I could go on forever. Today, the site is launched and I am proud to say that the project team members are amongst our most active users!
You think this concept is crazy? You already use this approach in your projects? Let us know and share your comments and experiences with us.
The following is also from the April 15-16 “Congrès du management de projet” organised by the Project Management Institute (PMI) and the Société Suisse de management de projet (SMP) in Lausanne. I would like to share with you my discovery of a very interesting tool to help people learn and improve their project management skills.
The tool is called “SIMULTRAIN” and is produced by STS. You can see a demo on their site but unfortunately, it does not really reflect the entire potential of the tool since it is not self-guided.
In any case, if you are thinking of providing project management training classes, you should think of incorporating this tool in your programme. Here is what the participants using this tool will be able to experiment with:
- Prepare a project plan taking into consideration resource capacity and availability
- Monitor the project costs, schedule and quality as well as their team motivation
- These indicators will be influenced by the decisions and actions taken during the project
- Each time the project manager makes a decision, a coach will provide his advice on it – was it a good, medium or bad decision? and why?
The scenarios are extremely realistic and you really get the feeling that you are managing a real project. Coupled with traditional project management training, this tool will bring much higher retention of concepts presented to the participants.
Coaching as something that is done off the sports field is something that we have known for about 15 years. As with any new discipline, the boundaries are not yet fully standardised and their application might vary dramatically from one coach to another.
At Marakoudja, we follow the guidance laid down by the International Coaching Federation which is, as far as we know, the most widely recognised accreditation body in terms of professional coaching.
“Founded in 1995, the International Coach Federation (ICF) is the leading global organization dedicated to advancing the coaching profession by setting high standards, providing independent certification, and building a worldwide network of credentialed coaches.
With more than 17,000 professional personal and business coaches representing over 95 countries, the ICF is the voice of the global coaching profession.
International Coach Federation Core Purpose: To advance the art, science and practice of professional coaching. “
About ICF
Business coaching is often confused with consulting, training or mentoring. Here are the differences:
- Consulting is about coming with deep expertise in an area and providing it to the customer: as consultants, we bring answers and solutions
- Training is about providing a way to go and ensure that the students understand and are able to apply the concept in their work: as trainers, we light the path
- Mentoring is about giving advice, acting as a wise person towards a less experienced one: as mentors, we show how to go on
Coaching is none of this. Coaching is about partnering with the client and bringing what it takes to allow him to move forwards in achieving his targets – using his own personal path. A coach is an advocate, a sounding board, a cheerleader, an accountability partner, a truth teller and a supporter. When you provide coaching, you are agreeing with the maxim that “you can bring a horse to water but you cannot make him drink”. The coach does not have the answers and does not claim to have them; the coach has the questions that allow the client to find their own answers.
The benefits of coaching are less tangible than consulting, training and mentoring. You always think that you can make it without coaching. You are already good in your field but you can still ask yourself could I be even better? Only you know the answer. But if you think yes, maybe a coach could get you there.
Would Federer have been beaten so often by Nadal earlier, if he had a coach?
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