Evaluate the tenders

Name: Evaluate the tenders
Type: Rules
Status: Final
Version: 2008-03-28
Referring to: Process.Call for tenders
Source [R8]: Curt Finch, Will Your Potential Software Vendor Meet Your Requirements?

Note: In one of my projects, we evaluated the written tenders first, then the presentations. Step 2 yielded a substantial change in our evaluation results. This can be taken as a hint, that written statements are not very well suited for these purposes.

R1: Has the supplier really anticipated the specific problem? Note that it can be hard to find the individual information among the heaps of tandard text in a witten tender

R2: Again have the the evaluations tasks divided and assigned to different team members

R3: you can evaluate the categories {form, content, sensed quality}
Note: For evaluation, you can something similar to Simple Solid Decision Making. We once used the following simpler, but less solid scheme:
- count: small and large problems with the tender's text, quastions not answered, good points
- give school grades
- build a ranking
Your provider management or purchasing dept maybe can supply you with a spredsheet for that.

R4 [too many suppliers on the list for presentations]: use ranking

R5: Encourange communication among the evaluation team

R6: explicitly allow "subjective" statements (the whole evaluation is kind of subjective). This works towards keeping subjectiveness out of the other criteria

R7: [lots of questions by suppliers]: give a chance to improve the tender (Do that by gathering all questions anonymously , answer them and send them back to the suppliers. Or, better, improve your spec and resubmit it)

R8: [doubts whether the statements about the past are true]: check their references. Be suspicious if references call YOU. Be suspicious if a reference uses an email address from Yahoo!, Hotmail, ... Get a company phone number and call their main number instead of the references' individual number. Do a web search on the company's name and check their website. Call ALL references.

R9: Mind that recent research shows, that decision making is not independent from your emotions