Chet’s Blog

First Draft Development
The plane finally landed in Atlanta.  It was two hours late due to a light malfunction in the cockpit control panel.  So, after a long week on the road Frank and I missed our connection to Tampa.  We were standing in line at Delta’s Customer Service Desk with a lot of other stranded types.  A line of thunderstorms was passing over the airport just to add to the mix of discomfort and futility.  Someone in front of us was using a hand held device to try to find a seat on another carrier.  A good use of line time.  Frank and I had our pocket spiral notepads and they only connected to our over stressed noggins.  “It’s time to take our endeavor to the next level,” said Frank.  I knew what he meant since we’d been through this before.  We both took a deep breath and started talking about what we would accomplish in the up-coming week.  Dutifully we noted our decisions down in the notepads which would never dump the information because of a bad battery.  And then before you knew it we were at the front of the line.  It actually interrupted our conversation.  We did get another flight home later that night but it was to another city where one of our wives was good enough to pick us up.  “It just takes a little patience and fortitude and you can make the best of any situation” summed up Frank.

INTRODUCTION – WRITING IS NEVER EASY
Here we go into the first draft development.  You’ve been patient with the process and now you’re ready to see the development of actual proposal pages.  The horrors and rigors of the storyboard review are behind us.  Now it seems like a great and rewarding experience.  Gone are the lunches that were brought in and gave everyone indigestion. No, now it looks like such a noble experience and we managed to gather a great deal of valuable data.  A few all steered Red Team designees came in to steer this formative stage of the bid.  Now we all know what should be in the first draft.  But writing is hard.  Getting your thoughts from the storyboards into text will take another level of discipline.

FRANK SAYS:
Frank warns that at this juncture people who are responsible for turning storyboards into draft will forget these valuable inputs (all scrawled nicely onto the original boards they got back after the Pink Team Review).  Frank says that without guidance they are likely to put the storyboards aside and start from scratch..

The whole draft development must be managed almost hourly.  So here we go….

PRODUCTION PLAN
Discuss production plans early.  Editors and illustrators need to know when the crunch times are on your schedule.  Although you will probably want authors to work on their computers storing draft directly to an assigned drive, there will be a cut over to production control before or after Red Team.  To ensure a smooth transition, you will want the final format template posted on the drive for authors to use.  You should also have a writing sample that reflects a strong proactive writing approach.  In short, the sooner you pave the road to production and the technical editors, the better.

FIRST DRAFT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
Everyone should be playing on the same page when you start writing draft from storyboards.  For this you must have a process.  Over the years I have used and revised processes to come up with the simplest most straight forward approach to this phase possible.  Again, you will want to go over this process at your Monday morning status meeting.  You will want to email it to the team and post it on the team file page.

TEXT DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

The text development process allows for the orderly progression from storyboard sign-off to text writing.  It is a process guided by Proposal Management that includes guides and templates which have been placed on the team drive.  The process is broken down into the following subsections:
1-    Update/Review – the process for updating and re-scoring storyboards
2-    Plan for Writing – the process for pre-writing planning
3-    Draft Visibility – the process for capturing storyboards and replacing them with text on the walls
4-    File Text Location – the process for writing and filing text along with the location of style sheets and guides
5-    The Review Process- the process of first draft and red team reviews
6-    Final Production – the process for developing and printing final draft.

Let’s look at a set of detailed instructions that can be given to the proposal development team after the storyboard review for these six steps.  These instructions will help to set the stage for an accurate first draft development:

1- UPDATE/REVIEW FOR COMPLETED STORYBOARDS
This procedure will ensure that your team has brought each of the storyboards to approved completion before turning them into text.  Resist the urge to bypass this step and go directly to draft development.   It is a rigorous exercise that will ensure quality text.
“    Update storyboards to include Storyboard Review comments
“    Have the updated boards reviewed again by an appointed Storyboard Reviewer (notify Proposal Management for appointments).
“    Once the boards have been graded they will go to the Proposal Management Team for final assessment.
“    If approved, the sections will move on to “Plan for Writing.”  If not approved, they will cycle again through update and review.

2- PLAN FOR WRITING
Once the storyboards have final approval, instruct the writers to plan out the next step before advancing.  This is an important step in “mind setting,” before writing begins.  The plan for writing should include the following elements:
“    Page count (resolve conflicts with Proposal Management).
“    Graphics (settle on the number of graphics for your section and put all draft graphics into production).  It is important to do this now since there will not be time at end game for a bow wave of graphics to hit production all at the same time.
“    Assign a writer responsibility for each section
“    Generate Draft for 1st Draft Review by fleshing out each of the points in the storyboard.  Always start with a positive statement that reveals the overall solution that you bring to the requirement being addressed.

A TEMPLATE for “Plan for Writing” should be placed on your team drive.  This template should give a layout for headers and the proposal paragraph numbering and enumeration scheme.  The writer can then save the template using a convention that includes paragraph number and title (e.g. 3.2.2.1 Software Development).  Once saved the writer can replace template headers with the actual text from the outline and then begin writing text.  After the text is captured and reviewed, the writer can update his work and save it with a revision notice attached to the title (e.g. 3.2.2.1 Software Development RevA).

3- DRAFT VISIBILITY
Once your storyboards have been approved and you have been given permission by Proposal management to proceed to “Plan for Writing,” take your storyboards off of the wall, copy them and replace them.

Retain the original Storyboard markup and yellow stickies to use as your Roadmap when developing text.  This is key to the entire process.  Some writers will want to retain the criticisms they received from the Storyboard Review and go straight to writing text without ever looking at their marked boards.  This is a mistake.  The Thematic Statement, substantiating data and graphics should all be transferred to the draft template and then developed into text.  This is the phase where it is important for the author to transfer everything on the approved storyboard to graphics.  In this way nothing will be lost in the process.  Remember, this is a simplified approach that does not require redundant forms. Nothing should be lost between the steps.  A good storyboard along with the review comments are used to create a substantial first draft with no other forms in between.

Once draft is developed, post it and remove the storyboard from the wall.

Draft visibility will allow the team to stay in step with progress in other proposal sections by merely “reading the wall.”  This device can be powerful as long as the team is encouraged to get their drafts up and not to hold them until just before the review process begins.  Status draft inputs on the wall daily.

4- TEXT FILE LOCATION
Proposal management creates file locations on the team drive for draft text entry.  This means that if you have a shared drive that only can be accessed by team members you will want to create an overall file called “ABC PROPOSAL FIRST DRAFT.”  Below this file you should set up individual files that correspond to the numbers and the names of the major paragraphs out of the Proposal Outline.  So, there would be a file for 3.2.2.1 Software Development.  Using this convention allows all involved to quickly find the correct files and gets people used to the numbering scheme.

Once your Plan for Writing has been approved you can proceed with text development and the population of these folders.  Each individual file folder can contain a writing guide, sample and a short form template for the benefit of each writer.

Proceed with text development within the files using the following steps:

Text Development Steps
Step 1- Location for individual section folders: Your team Drive://ABC Proposal First Draft/Individual files per paragraph.
Step 2 – Use the Text short form Template including style guide for text entry.
Step 3-  Use the style guide in each individual section folder for text development guidance.
Step 4- Enter all paragraph numbers and paragraph titles per the Proposal Outline.  Do not change the government’s wording.  Always use their titles for lower level paragraphs not included in the outline.

Graphics Development Steps
Step 1- Use the Storyboard sketch and comments to finish your graphic concept
Step 2- Number Graphics, both Figures and Tables, with a convention that ties them to the paragraph number they will be a part of (e.g. 3.2.2.1-1 for the first Software Development graphic or table).  Tables and graphics are numbered in the same parallel order.

HOW TO USE WRITING GUIDES/TEMPLATES
A short writing template including a style guide should be made available for each section and paragraph as a part of the writing guide.  Make a copy of the template and save it in the appropriate first draft file using the same naming conventions used for the storyboards (e.g. 3.4.4 Air Platform).  Longer sections can be divided into subparagraphs.

Once a section is drafted and is ready for section leader review, HANG A COPY on the assigned wall space in the proposal war room.  This gives the visibility to data on the proposal to the entire team.  Other sections may depend on data and ideas from other parts of the proposal so we want everything that we can get up on that wall.  We also want the graphics up so that common graphics are not recreated.  Multiple development of similar graphics is a waste of time and resources.

FORMATS AND DOORMATS
Many publications departments have strict formatting rules.  These rules and the formats that they use give a consistency to their products and for the most part are professional looking and do the job.  However, when you have a page limited proposal you will often have to suggest variations.  It is the consultants job to present a case for getting more words on the page.  In many cases Section L instructions may dictate space and one-half using a minimum of 12 font.  This severely limits what you can put on a page from the get go.  However, if the government has not dictated margins, you may find that a three quarter inch margin still looks good and gains you words.

TIP & TRICK
The use of run-in headers is important.  There is a way in Word to get run-in headers for lower level paragraphs while still being able to create automatic table of contents (TOC).  You can accomplish this by using a “hidden return.”  The header and text will run-in on the first line of the paragraph, but the software will see the hidden return and will just pick up the paragraph number and title for the TOC.  It’s a good trick.

FRANK SAYS: After about two hundred times of testing the old single column, double column styles for better word count, the single column wins again!  The Single Column wins because it holds more words!  It doesn’t look as good and someone will always want to argue that double column can give you more words, but there is no way that they can beat the mathematics of the matter: take a swath of words and letters out of the center of any page and Viola!  You have fewer words.  And yet, it will always be argued.  Save yourselves some time and use a single column format to begin with.

CONSULTANTS CORNER
As a proposal consultant there are a lot of lose ends to keep track of.  Always be sure to do the following:
“    Publish your status notes so that everyone knows what to expect during the draft writing period.
“    Have an action item list kept up to date with responsibilities and end dates for draft development clearly stated.
“    Frequently touch base with individual team members to give them the opportunity to voice any misunderstandings or frustrations they may have.

FRANK SAYS: Always run the traps at least once a day.  You never know when one of them may have been tripped.  It’s better to circumvent an unhappy camper and his problem before it runs through the entire team and becomes an unmanageable run away train.

ELEVATOR DRAWINGS AND OTHER CURE ALLS
It really cannot hurt to have a single drawing that the Solicitation Officer can show to his boss between floors on the elevator to convince him that he picked the right contractor. Or  can it?  Depends on the bid.  Now if you have a complex bid where the client is looking for a prime integrator it may be a little harder to conjure up such a diagram than if you’re selling upgrade 2 ½ ton trucks to the Army.  As an integrator with a myriad of solutions from COTS/GOTS/NDI to interoperability problems you may find such a drawing too confusing.  If you do, it’s worth the time to hone those strategies into something that is both pleasing to the eye and technically correct.  This is a hard conceptual task but well worth the exercise.  The drawing could become the first graphic in your Executive Summary.

FRANK SAYS: My elevator drawing had six focus points to remember and a pretty picture they couldn’t forget.

Now that was probably a good application for the old saw.  Here are the steps to use to put one together:
Step 1 – Take an 11 ½” by 17″  piece of paper.  At one end draw a table for features benefits.
Step 2- In the middle of the remaining panel place a photo or drawing of the finished concept or architecture.
Step 3- Draw arrows into the vital points and then fill in balloons for each drawing with the pertinent approach/solution/capabilities.
Step 4 – Write in reference numbers to the specification and statement of work for each of these so that they can see the relevance of the drawing.
Step 5- Let good illustrators turn your grubby sketch into something beautiful.

TEAM ASSESSMENT OF FIRST DRAFT
Your draft is mostly finished as you head toward the first draft review.  Now is a good time for the Proposal Manager to take a quick look at what he has.  No matter how good the storyboards and the previous review comments are, first draft is always first draft.  But although it may be a bit raggedy, all of the right data should be in all of the right places.  This is the advantage of the system.  The process now becomes one of editing, reviewing and polishing instead of countless rewrites.  This system will save you time and resources if you work it and don’t just give it lip service.
Here are a few of the obvious things the manager should look for in the draft:
“    Correct paragraph numbers and titles.  Do they line up with the Proposal Outline?
“    Poor writing.  Sentences and paragraphs that start with a figure or a table reference.
“    Motherhood.  Flowery language filled with adjectives and hyperbole that say nothing substantive.
“    Missing graphics.  Incorrect or duplicate graphics callouts in text or none at all.

FRANK SAYS
An old proposal saw is to respond to a requirement with an approach that can be reinforced with substantiating data.  Motherhood does not win evaluation points.

USING THE BS STAMP
I had a friend who taught me some of the ropes when I started out on the road.  Near the first color team review, we would compile the first draft.  My friend Frank would sit down with me and we’d read each piece of that draft aloud.  After each thought, he taught me to pause and check to see whether or not the material said anything of value, or was it merely Bull S..t. He’d get out his Bull S..t stamp and do away with anything that didn’t pass the test.  I still use this method for first cut draft submittals.  However, I have a red pen for deletes.

THE BEAUTY OF A BOOK PLAN
Okay, there’s one more cure-all that I can’t resist giving you.  The Book Plan.  This plan is a single large sheet of glossy paper that contains every bit of information you would need as a customer to decipher what has arrived in all of these boxes.  The need for a plan is even greater today given the instructions for both ancient printed matter and electronic media.  The plan can also be used to emphasize how you have followed the customer’s Section L Proposal Development Instructions .  Once you’ve developed your plan you can drop a copy into the top of each packing box just like the computer system companies do.  It’s always nice to see an easily read layout of a complicated solution.

SUMMARY
Creating a first draft requires a process for gathering information and instructing first time authors.  The leaner this process is the more likely it can be applied successfully.  We have seen how such a process can be used in the transition from storyboard development and review to draft writing.  The use of on-line formats and templates added to an electronic file system can regulate and help status the process. The enforcement of using the wall to give a high visibility to all of the data being developed gives the team the cross pollination of ideas necessary for a tightly written powerful first draft.

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