CHAPTER 1: OVERALL PROCESS

Before we get into the details of each stage, it’s useful to understand the whole process, so you can see how it all fits together. This will also aid you in planning the selection activities; a number of people are likely to be involved and they will all need advance notice of what’s expected, so that they can plan their diaries accordingly.

In this chapter, we will look at:

• stages in the process
• what documentation you may produce
• how the process can fit with your project management methodology.

Stages in the process

The overall ‘vanilla’ process looks like this (see Figure 1) (bearing in mind that the various stages will often need to be tailored to meet your specific needs and situation):

Figure 1: Overall process

Let’s examine each of these stages in a little more detail:

Define selection parameters

Once you’ve realised that you need to make a selection, it’s tempting to dive straight into examining possible options in detail. However, it’s important to take the time to ensure you really understand why you need to make the selection and what you expect to gain from it.

This exercise won’t take very long, but does need to involve all the key stakeholders. The details of this stage are outlined in Chapter 2.

Gather requirements

Requirements should be gathered from all user groups, involving as many people as is practical. This is likely to involve most people in at least one workshop and probably several reviews of the resulting document. This activity is detailed in Chapter 3.

Draft a Request for Information document

In order to reduce your potential options to a sensible number, you’ll need to be able to compare them in a reasonably consistent manner. It’s hard to do this just by looking at websites or brochures, as these are likely to be laid out in completely different ways and may not provide you with all the information you need. Asking them all to respond to the same Request for Information (RFI) is a useful solution.

The RFI is usually drawn up by one person, but should be reviewed by all key stakeholders. This activity is covered in Chapter 4.

Agree a longlist

The longlist should be of a sufficient number to enable you to make a good choice, but not so many that it becomes a mammoth task to review all the responses.

A number of people may be involved in providing candidates, but it’s not likely to be a very time-consuming task. This activity is covered in Chapter 5.

Issue RFI to longlist

It’s best to contact everyone on your longlist before e-mailing the RFI out, so this task isn’t quite as short as it may sound. If you need to send out a non-disclosure agreement before sending the RFI, this can add appreciably to the timescale. This activity is also covered in Chapter 5.

Agree review criteria and team

Based on the RFI, you need to develop a list of criteria that everyone can use when they review the responses. This makes it much easier to compare thoughts and write up the reviews. Chapter 6 covers who should be on the selection team and how to develop the criteria list.

Reduce to a shortlist

Once you’ve received the responses back, the selection team will need to assess them fairly against the agreed criteria. They will need to allow sufficient time to review the responses and for the shortlisting meeting. Chapter 7 covers the shortlisting process itself and the documentation involved.

In-depth investigation of shortlist

Once a shortlist has been agreed, the team can examine each in much closer detail. This can be time-consuming, with a number of activities to be scheduled in. Chapter 8 specifies what activities this will usually involve.

Decide on the preferred candidate

Once the investigation is complete, the preferred candidate will be selected and the decision can be documented. This will involve a selection meeting and, possibly, further activities. This is covered in Chapter 9.

Negotiation and contract

Once you have made your selection, a final step, negotiating the contract terms, is necessary before you can be sure that you will be going ahead with your preferred candidate. This will likely involve your legal and finance teams as well.

You may also want to do a proof of concept (such as developing a small part of a system to prove that it will work) or pilot before finally committing yourself. Chapter 9 provides some guidance about these activities.

Implementation and appointment

This is going beyond the selection process! However, Chapter 10 concludes with some guidance as to what the next steps are likely to be.

Documentation

The number and formality of the documents you produce will depend very much on your organisation’s governance standards, and also on the cost of the system or service being selected. Even if you don’t need to produce any formal documents other than the Request for Information (this has to be formal as it will be sent externally), there are several that can be very useful during the selection process, even if they are simply used to aid you during the activities and are not kept afterwards.

(The term ‘formal’ is used here to mean a document that is version controlled, reviewed and signed off.)

Possible documents include those listed in Table 1 (overleaf).

Table 1: Possible documents

Templates for all these documents are provided in the chapters indicated in the table.

Fit with project management methodology

Before we move onto the detail of each of the stages, it’s worth taking a moment to think about how the process can fit in with any project management methodology you may use.

In fact, this selection process fits very well. Selections usually fall within the initiation part of a project. Indeed, it may be necessary to complete the selection process before a business case can be passed to the relevant board for approval.

If you follow a project management methodology, it will no doubt include agreement of elements, such as objectives, outcomes, constraints, business case and scope, which may well cover the Define selection parameters stage of this process.

The remainder of the selection process can be managed within the framework of any project management methodology.

It’s fairly common for the project manager to be the lead for producing the documents outlined above. However, there’s no reason why these should not be produced by another team member, although the project manager will retain overall responsibility for ensuring that they are produced on time and to agreed quality.

The project board will often be involved in the whole process, possibly even being members of the selection team. Even if they are not, they should certainly be involved in deciding the details of the process (e.g. what documentation is needed, what activities should be performed) and also kept appraised of progress. A summary of responses document can be useful to inform board members about the shortlisting stage, and the evaluation report will inform their decision on whether to approve the final recommended option.

In short, the selection process dovetails well with a standard project management process.