Managing proposal operations

Managing Proposal Operations

Run the proposal as a project. The other proposal skills produce artifacts — a compliance matrix, an outline, drafted sections. This skill produces the operating system that gets those artifacts written, reviewed, corrected, and submitted on time by the right people. In real proposal shops this is where bids are won or lost operationally: a strong solution that misses the schedule, skips a review, or fumbles an amendment still loses.

When to use this skill

Use this skill at proposal kickoff — when the RFP releases (or a draft RFP makes kickoff worthwhile) — and throughout the proposal phase to keep the effort on track. It is the hub skill for proposal development: it coordinates the work that shredding-solicitations, outlining-proposals, the drafting skills, the review skills, and checking-submission-compliance perform.

It does not produce proposal content. It produces the plan, schedule, assignments, action register, question log, and review logistics that the content skills run inside.

Inputs

Required: the solicitation, including Section L (volumes, format, due date) and any submission instructions.

Preferred upstream artifacts:

• 10-compliance-matrix.md: the requirement inventory the volume plan and assignments are built around.
• 00-opportunity-profile.md, 05-win-strategy.md — orienting context.

Read ../../shared/glossary.md, ../../shared/proposal-lifecycle.md, and ../../shared/pursuit-workspace.md if not already read this session. Perform the workspace bootstrap described in pursuit-workspace.md if this is the first artifact in the pursuit.

Intake

Ask these as a numbered list. Skip what the solicitation answers.

1. The deadline. What is the exact proposal due date, time, and time zone?
2. The volumes. What volumes does Section L require, and what are their page limits?
3. The team. Who is available — proposal manager, capture manager, volume leads, authors, reviewers, pricing, production, contracts — and what is each person's availability?
4. The schedule constraints. What review milestones does the team intend (Pink, Red, Gold, others)? Are there holidays, competing deadlines, or approval gates that constrain the calendar?
5. State of the pursuit. Has the solicitation been shredded? Does a compliance matrix exist? Have any amendments or Q&A been issued?

Workflow

Proposal Operations Setup:
- [ ] Step 1: Run kickoff intake; perform workspace bootstrap if first artifact
- [ ] Step 2: Build the proposal schedule backward from the deadline
- [ ] Step 3: Build the volume plan and author assignments (RACI)
- [ ] Step 4: Stand up the action item register
- [ ] Step 5: Stand up the question log and amendment process
- [ ] Step 6: Build the review and production plan
- [ ] Step 7: Write the proposal management plan; maintain it through the phase

Step 1: Kickoff. Run intake. Confirm the deadline and the team. This is the kickoff: the moment the proposal becomes a managed effort.

Step 2: Schedule. Build the schedule backward from the due date, using references/proposal-management-plan.md: submission, production buffer, Gold Team, recovery, Red Team, recovery, drafting, Pink Team, storyboards, compliance matrix. Backward scheduling is the only honest way — it shows whether the available time is enough, and surfaces a schedule crisis while it can still be managed.

Step 3: Volume plan and assignments. Map the volumes and their sections to named owners. Build a RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) for each volume and major section. Every section has exactly one accountable author. Cross-check against the compliance matrix Owner column.

Step 4: Action register. Stand up the action item register: every open action with an owner, a due date, and a status. The action register is the team's shared list of what is not yet done.

Step 5: Question log and amendments. Stand up the question log and the amendment process using references/question-and-amendment-control.md: capture every question the team has for the contracting officer, draft them for submission by the deadline, log every government answer, and run an impact analysis on every amendment (what changed in Section L, M, C, the due date, and which requirements and artifacts must update).

Step 6: Review and production plan. Schedule the color reviews (timing, participants, materials, logistics) and the production process (assembly, formatting, the final compliance check, submission mechanics). Coordinate with reviewing-color-teams, running-review-recovery, and checking-submission-compliance.

Step 7: Write and maintain. Write the 09-proposal-management/ artifact set using templates/proposal-management-plan.md. Then maintain it: the schedule, action register, and question log are living and are updated daily. Re-running this skill updates them per the merge protocol in pursuit-workspace.md.

Output

A directory 09-proposal-management/ in the pursuit workspace containing the proposal management plan, schedule, assignments/RACI, action register, question log, and review plan.

Present the user with: the schedule with its critical milestones, the assignment gaps (sections with no owner), the open high-priority actions, the status of outstanding questions and amendments, and any point where the schedule is at risk.

References

• references/proposal-management-plan.md: what the proposal management plan contains, backward scheduling from the deadline, the volume plan and RACI, and the daily operating cadence.
• references/question-and-amendment-control.md: the question log, drafting formal questions to the contracting officer, processing government answers, and amendment impact analysis.
• templates/proposal-management-plan.md: the proposal management artifact set template.

Guardrails

• Schedule backward from the deadline. The due date is fixed; everything else is derived from it. Forward scheduling hides the crunch until it is too late to manage.
• Every section has one accountable owner. Unassigned sections and shared accountability are how requirements get missed.
• The plan is living. A proposal management plan written once and never updated is worse than none — it creates false confidence. Maintain it daily.
• Amendments are not minor. Every amendment gets an impact analysis. A changed due date or Section L rule that the team does not absorb is a predictable loss.
• This skill coordinates; it does not write content. Proposal narrative is the drafting skills' work.