A while back I received a RFP (Request for Proposal) and posted a bit of commentary around it. I’ve been thinking that a more in-depth look at the content might help people putting together similar documents in the future, so wanted to go through it in more detail. Based on this one specifically, it turns out to be a more “how not to do it” than anything.
In the interest of overall length, I’m only going to focus on the elements of the document that seemed odd or downright silly. I hate for this post to come off as totally negative, but there didn’t seem to be much value in reproducing parts of the document that weren’t note-worthy.
I should also note - this RFP was not from a large company, or national organization - it was from a non-profit located in an area of the state that isn’t considered “urban”. Near as we could tell, the site was only moderately bigger than the average small business website. Some of the requests below might make sense if the project is either larger in scope or for a larger company.
Proposal Guidelines and Requirements
- If you wish to submit alternative solutions, please do so.
- The price you quote should be inclusive. If your price excludes certain fees or charges, you must provide a detailed list of excluded fees with a complete explanation of the nature of those fees.
- If the execution of work to be performed by your company requires the hiring of sub-contractors you must clearly state this in your proposal. Sub-contractors must be identified and the work they perform must be defined. In your proposal provide the name, address and EIN of each sub-contractor. The [Organization Name] will not refuse a proposal based upon sub-contractors; however we retain the right to refuse the sub-contractors you have selected.
OK - starting to see some questions here.
On #1 - this will become a bigger question later. Can the alternative be outside of the guidelines in this document - essentially restructuring the whole project?
On #2 - This just gave me a bit of a chuckle - essentially saying “Your price should be inclusive. If you have left any fees out, please include them.”
On #3 - This one caught me a bit off-guard. Often—especially in smaller companies - subcontractor arrangements are quite critical to the proposal. In other words, if you tell me I can’t work with a certain subcontractor then I can’t do the project as I’ve proposed it. I just didn’t react well to being told that I didn’t have the ultimate say in who I could or couldn’t work with - especially so early in the document. If this is a true requirement and not just a power-play, it should go in a footnote somewhere. I’m also not sure why the sub contractor’s EIN is required, if the submitting entity is going to be handling all the invoicing.
Contract Terms
The [Organization Name] will negotiate final contract terms upon selection. All contracts are subject to review of the [Organization Name]‘s legal counsel, and a project will be awarded upon signing of an agreement or contract, which outlines terms, scope, budget and other necessary items.
Not a big deal here, but my first thought was - so they’re going to accept quotes but still try to negotiate the price? Probably not - just other contract terms but it was my first reaction.
Purpose
The proposed site will serve as a hub for:
- Announcements, news releases and other communications concerning [organization’s purpose].
- The site will also serve the staff internally, supporting some operations.
OK - pretty general stuff here, very typical. However we’re getting a bit vague:
On #1 - What are the “other communications”?
On #2 - what are these “operations”?
Description
The site must have the capacity to deliver large amounts of dynamic information to our key audiences. Administration of web content should be based on roles that allow the control of access and workflow.
In summary, our web site must be:
- Easy and intuitive to navigate
- Visually pleasing
- Informative
- Safe and secure
- Quick to load pages
- Convenient to maintain
- Flexible, programming should allow for additional functionality
Yes, well. I guess when I see a part of a website RFP called “description” I just expected more detail This is filler, subjective stuff that’s impossible to quantify- (is content “dynamic” because the content is in and of itself exciting, or is it dynamic because it’s getting pulled from a database?). Actually the document attempts to quantify some of these things later.
Oh - and that role-based workflow thing. How many people/layers/steps will there be? That one sentence alone could drastically affect the choice of tools and the amount of time to implement.
Timeline
- Phase 1 of the project must be complete and delivered by [date]
- All further deliverable date will be determined during Phase 1.
What-hey? Phase 1? One of how many? Read on…
Budget
The budget must encompass all design, production and software acquisitions necessary for development and maintenance of the web site.
Costs and solutions for hosting should be separately addressed.
Provide pricing separately for:
- Phase 1: Discovery, Requirements Planning and Site Definition
- Phase 2: Site Development, Test and Deployment
- Phase 3: Hosting
Wait. Go back and read that again. Here’s where it gets really wonky. The budget needs to be all-inclusive, yet the project has been split up into a Discovery Phase that’s separate from the Development.
In other words, “We don’t know exactly what we want, we want you to help us figure that out, but you need to tell us what the whole thing is going to cost to build in advance.”
Yes - us web people. Nothing short of Carnac the Magnificent with laptops.
Only two outcomes are possible by structuring a project like this—either you are going to pay too much for the site (because we guessed way high to cover ourselves), or we’re not going to get paid enough to develop it (because we guessed low). The odds of delivering a quality site at a fair market rate are minimal.
Oh - and the discovery phase due date was set in the RFP - so even though they aren’t web experts, or do they know what exactly the discovery process will involve or what the deliverables will be, they know how long it should take. One month, as it turns out. Oh, and by the way, the organization is new and not all the board members have been selected or elected yet.
Development Guidelines
(Inappropriately named, these actually specific features desired in the solution)
Once the site is completed and accepted, the [Organization] would like to be able to easily update the infrastructure, such as adding an additional main link (tabs, main menu item, etc.)
I’m sure this differs by CMS, but I’ve yet to work on a CMS-driven site of any scope where main navigation could be easily changed by the end user. And adding a link is one thing, the bigger question is what are you linking to, and who is building that?
Easy to navigate - Information should be grouped and presented in a logical manner and generally require no more than a few clicks to find the desired information
Uh oh - someone’s been reading usability research. Danger! Rather than focus on the number of clicks, how about we organize it the best it can be organized?
Ability to deliver and change mini-tours via the site.
Sure. Oh wait. What’s a “mini-tour”? Video, images? VR? Don’t make up things and then not define them.
Strategy for optimizing the site’s search position.
How about we wait for the discovery to tell us whether a good search position is necessary, given the site’s purpose, audience, and other marketing/promotional methods?
Secure section where documents can be shared and accessed.
OK, an extranet as well. How many people will need access? What types of documents? How many?
Gather email, name, business/organization information and other demographics from web site visitors in a format that permits the [Organization Name] to maintain a single database of contact information.
Our question here was around expectations. Is the intent to use a fill-in-the-blank form to collect this, or is the expectation that the server can magically gather all this automatically?
Site Specifications
Site must be compatible with IE and Netscape browsers. Compatible browser versions must be specified in the proposal.
Netscape? What’s that?
Site should be developed with the intent to meet ADA requirements - Federally-mandated access requirements adopted by the Federal Access Board under section 508 subsection 1194.22 of the Rehabilitation Act.
Fuzzy langauge here - should or shouldn’t the site meet the ADA requirements?
Site should be built with the considerations of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 provided by the W3C and should also be accessible to the novice as well as the experienced internet user.
Again, fuzzy language here - should or shouldn’t the site meet the Accessibility Guidelines, and to what level?
Web pages should load quickly. The site should be designed with a balance of text and graphics such that each page loads in 6 seconds or less on the average computer.
Um, yea. First question - what’s the “average computer”? What about connection speeds? Why 6 seconds? Real red flag here - if the site happens to take longer than 6 seconds to load on some remote person’s 28.8 dialup connection and they complain, do we still get paid?
Testing
Testing of the site should occur on all applicable platforms to ensure web site works as promised. Test plan and testing process should be explained in detail in the proposal.
I’m curious around what people do for test plans. In former jobs we had these really detailed step by step test plans that outlined every link you had to click on. Essentially, though, it seems like most web testing can be boiled down to “does it look right” and “do any plug-ins used work cross-browser”? This statement had me wondering if someone was coming from a more involved software application development background, and concerned around test-plan expectations.
Delivery
Delivery and uploading of the site to the hosting entity is required and should be specifically addressed in the proposal.
Addressed how? Just saying that we’ll do it?
Qualifications
Briefly describe your firm’s organizational capacity to produce our web site (e.g. staff, equipment, software, physical space, office location, etc.).
Huh? My equipment? Space? Location? What in the world do these have to do with our ability to produce a website? I’m guessing they don’t want to hear “My laptop, sitting at the local coffee shop”...yet that’s how many sites get developed these days.
What also concerns me here is the idea that they as an organization somehow know or can determine the best equipment and software necessary for developing a site. Just feels egotistical.
Briefly describe the percentage of your web staff that would work on this project relative to your entire staff. For example, if you would use five staff on the project and you have ten web designers and developers, the percentage would be 50%.
Well, sure. 100% of the staff, 100% of the time… Again, the feeling I get from this is they feel they know the proper percentages required to complete the project on time. From my perspective this is my business - all you as a client need to know is that the site will be on time, on budget, and meet the requirements. Let me make the sausage.
Briefly describe the type of team that will be assigned to this project. What will each person’s role be? Include a background summary for each key staff member that will be assigned to this project.
Uh, a web development project team SIR! Are you getting a feel for the sheer amount of data required in this RFP? But wait, there’s more….
Briefly describe your firm’s project management process.
Again, I wonder what their expectations are. At smaller web firms the process can be “We figure out what to build, then build it.”. I’ve had jobs where the project management process was much more involved with numerous documents (project charters, etc) had to be filled out, then a bunch of MSProject templates employed.
Provide a description in percentages as to the total revenue derived from site development and other business ventures.
I’ve never had this question asked of me before. I guess I can see the logic of it - that a firm that does a higher percentage of web work would be better at it, but I don’t see where that precludes a quality offering coming from a company whose income is only 25% related to web development. Still, I’m a bit hesitant to discuss my revenue - either in numbers or percentages - in an RFP.
Explain your business model.
I build websites and people pay me for it.
Discuss any planned IPOs, mergers or acquisitions your firm is considering.
Yes, I notice that companies planning these sorts of things are willing to discuss them with anyone who asks.
Discuss your testing and support plans.
A detailed testing plan has already been requested, so not sure what this is after.
Explain your service level agreement (SLA) structure.
Well, it has a beginning, middle, and end. I’m curious if other web developers have formal SLA’s in place, obviously the expectation with this RFP is that they do.
Communicate any terms and conditions your organization use in contract agreements.
I’m certainly not a lawyer, but my contracts are full of terms and conditions. Why discuss them outside of the contract itself? Why not just provide the contract?
Project Plan
Value/Pricing Structure and Pricing Levels - The price is commensurate with the value offered by the candidate. As a non-profit institution, the [Organization Name] is able to accept pro bono service and recognize the provider to the full extent allowed by the Internal Revenue Service, including naming the provider within the web site and other collateral as an [Organization Name] supporter and partner.
I referenced this one before, but still get a chuckle from it—“Give us a free website and we’ll let you put your name on it and speak really highly of you. I’ll bet we could send more free-website-seeking people your way”.
Depth and Breadth of Staff - The candidate firm has appropriate staff to develop the site in the time frame needed.
Because, being not in the web development business, they know exactly what the appropriate staff is required to develop the site in the time frame needed.
Hosting
- How often do they upgrade software/hardware?
- Describe their technical support.
- Describe their security.
- Describe their technical speed capabilities.
- Describe their methodology and service level agreements.What are their pricing, terms and conditions?
Upgrades - as often as makes sense?
Tech support—Good? Or…they’re middle aged and a bit thick around the middle?
Security—Good? (How do you describe web-host security to someone who likely doesn’t know the lingo?)
Methodology? Uh, They have computers hooked to the internet, you put your website on them, they charge you for it.
Pricing, terms and conditions….good grief - how about I just link you to their website where all of these questions are probably answered?
In Conclusion
Maximum proposal length including title page, cover letter, proposal, qualifications and budget should not exceed 25 pages (not including Hosting proposal and information).
In other words, “We’ve asked you for 50 pages of data and would like to watch you squirm in order to fit it into 25. Then we can rule you out based on it being incomplete”.
So there you have it (and those are just the highlights).
What this specific RFP did was virtually guarantee a non-response by:
- Asking for so much data that it would take days to put it together
- Structuring the project such that it puts too much risk on the part of the responder by having to quote a fixed price on a site that is undefined.
The end result is that in order to respond at all you have to spend 20-30 non-billable hours just putting a response together with already little hope of being selected and making up for that time—all for a project that’s doomed to fail in one way or another, and not incredibly profitable to begin with.
If you’re reading this because you’ve Googled for input on Website RFQ’s - please, hire a competent web developer and have them help you put together the RFP in a way that ensure a better response for you, and makes the project more enticing for other web developers. I can do that for you - please contact me.
Comments are closed, but you can read the comments other people left.
Leslie on May 01, 2007
Dave J. on May 02, 2007
Ryan Masuga on May 03, 2007
Erwin Heiser on May 04, 2007
Joelle on May 24, 2007
Hmmm on July 16, 2007
Marcus on July 25, 2007
Steve on August 15, 2007
Boyink (Author) on August 15, 2007
Matt Edwards on August 28, 2007
Boyink (Author) on August 28, 2007
Dave J. on August 28, 2007
Matt Edwards on August 29, 2007
Leslie on August 29, 2007
Matt Edwards on August 29, 2007
VMB on October 28, 2007