Series Project Management: RFP documents

This blog series is dedicated to project management of e-Governance projects. The e-Governance projects are peculiar due to the involvement of the government as a client. Here project management is a three-front exercise involving IT application management and bureaucracy management of both the client as well as vendor. This setup is different from the normal client-vendor model that is marked by ownership and professionalism. In this series, I would summarise my observations and suggestions for the effective management of such projects. the In this blog post, I will share my insights on RFP documents.

RFP documents: RFP is one of the most important documents of any project in the government.  It focuses on capturing bigger functional objectives. However, many times, it misses out on small aspects that could impact the quality of the delivery.  Some of the suggestions for the RFP document are the following:

• The document should detail simple definitions like what is system or who is the user in order to avoid any misunderstanding.
• The document should be treated as a legal document and any full stop or punctuation mark should be evaluated from the perspective of requirements and delivery. In the event of a dispute, all arguments boil down to the RFP and associated MOU document.
• The document should list the necessary tools and technology stack that should be deployed for proper monitoring and execution of the project. For IT projects, the use of standard project management tools, APM, Bug tracking, code repository, single sign-on, and communication tool should be put in place.
• The document should cover how finance is going to be linked with operations and delivery of the project. 
• The document should define the service level agreements (SLA) on which the project should be evaluated. One view is that such SLAs should be part of SRS and FRS documents however, it is advisable that RFPs mention some open-ended clauses related to SLAs that can be referred to in the event of a misunderstanding between the vendor and the client.
• RFP document should clearly state the ownership of the code, resources, and level of transparency in the execution process by clearly listing out the authority and mandate of the department.
• The document should give equal importance to post-completion operational phase clauses. 
• Least of all, the RFP document should cover learnings from past projects.

In the next post, I would summarise all the major steps and documents involved from ideation to delivery of the e-Governance project.

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