September 2012: Proposal Integration Workshops Ensure Early Storyline Cohesion

Integrating the storyline after the proposal is mostly written is like inspecting quality into a finished product—neither works very well.

Early and continuous proposal integration is especially difficult in today’s environment where teams are physically distributed and working virtually … because the traditional “wall walk” cannot be relied upon to accomplish this task. This situation delays the real integration effort to a very risky post-Red Team timeframe where the now relatively small number of writers are physically present together in the proposal center.

The Proposal Integration Workshop is a proven approach which engages the team at several key points in the proposal development schedule (e.g. pre-Pink Team and pre-Red Team) to assure storyline integration. It is a several hour informal meeting of all writers and proposal leadership where each writer briefly presents (virtually or otherwise), among other things, his/ her approach to the section, why it wins, and where

it connects to other parts of the proposal. Benefits include:

• Storyline cohesiveness going into Pink/ Red Team Reviews

• Graphics integration

• Team building

• Peer motivation

• Course correction/ feedback

• Scheduled informal/ peer review of complete proposal product between major reviews