Effective RFP for Software Development [Template & Process]

Project goals

Work with your stakeholders to establish the project’s goals. Providing this information in your RFP will help give the software development vendor some perspective on what you’re trying to achieve and why.

Key questions to consider:

• What would need to be delivered to consider the project successful?
• How does this project feed into other internal software projects or company objectives?

Stakeholders

Identify the stakeholders who will be involved in the request for proposal process as well as the software project itself. Make note of each person’s roles and responsibilities along with who has decision-making power in the RFP process.

Key questions to consider:

• Who needs to approve the RFP document before it is sent to vendors?
• Who will be involved in the vendor selection process?
• Who will be interfacing with the vendor during and after the vendor selection process?

Budget

Establish a budget for the project. This could be a specific dollar figure, an hourly rate you’re comfortable with, or even a range that you’d like to stay within. Any specific constraints to budget should also be noted, including when payment could be made and in what quarter or fiscal year funds are available.

Key questions to consider:

• Is the budget flexible?
• Are there any limitations as to when the budget can be spent?
• Who must approve the final budget?

Timeline

Establish a timeline for the project. Utilize project management tools to understand project dependencies and staffing availability that could affect your project timeline. Be as detailed as you can at this stage. Any specific timeline constraints could help vendors provide you a more accurate software development project bid.

Key questions to consider:

• What project dependencies should be considered?
• What are the implications if the project deadline is not met?
• Are there milestones that must be met or one single end delivery deadline?

Project requirements

You should have a detailed list of non-functional and functional requirements before proceeding with the RFP process. This is perhaps the most critical piece of project planning if you want to get accurate project bids from each software development company.

Key questions to consider:

• Who needs to be involved in drafting software requirements?
• What is the process for drafting, adding, or removing requirements?
• What diagrams need to be created to support a vendor’s understanding of the requirements?

Scope

Consider what piece of the software development process you’d like the software development company to be involved in. Spell this out specifically, so you can accurately communicate it to vendors in the RFP document.

Key questions to consider:

• Will the scope of the project include UI/UX design?
• Do you need software architecture design support?
• Does the software need to be built from scratch or is only customization or modification work required?

RFP screening process

Unless your company already has an RFP screening process defined for software projects, you need to establish one. Work with your management team or sourcing team to define a specific screening process that’s appropriate for software vendors.

Key questions to consider:

• Is there already an RFP screening process established within your company?
• Who needs to be involved in drafting a new RFP screening process or modifying an existing one?

Selection criteria

Beyond just vendor screening, you should also think about how you will ultimately select the right vendor. You’ll want to provide your vendors a list of specific criteria in your RFP for software development, so that they can tailor their bids to address your priorities.

Key questions to consider:

• Which criteria are most important to you when selecting a vendor?
• What are you willing to compromise on?

Statement of purpose

Explain why you are requesting software development services and, in brief, what you are looking for from vendors.

Company overview

Provide a company description to give vendors some insight into who you are and why you are developing this particular software.

Project goals

Describe the specific goals of the project along with who your end users will be. This will help provide a framework for vendors to understand more details about the project in the coming sections.

Project Goals:

• What do you hope to achieve with this project?
• How will this project fit into your company’s short or long term goals?

Target Audience:

• Who are the end users of your software?
• B2B or B2C audience?

Scope of work

In this section, you should provide more details about the project at hand. The more specific you can be, the more accurate the proposals will be. Start by outlining the scope of the work at a high level, then provide a detailed list of project requirements and specific deliverables. If possible, include how you will measure success for each deliverable.

Work overview: We are looking for a company who can provide the following services:

• What specific UI/UX services are you looking for?
• What project planning and architecture services are you looking for?
• What specific software development services are you looking for?
• What project management support are you looking for?
• What post-launch support services are you looking for?

Requirements:

This is a good place to attach a detailed list of non-functional and functional requirements or a more formal SRS document that outlines your project requirements.

Deliverables:

• What should the IT vendor deliver by project completion?
• How will you measure success?

Budget & contract terms

Even if you don’t have a specific budget, you at least need to provide a range to potential vendors, so they know how to write their proposal. Your budget in combination with your project schedule will dictate if they have the resources to provide what you’re looking for and if not, what compromises you would need to make for them to deliver.

This is also a good place to specify any specific contract terms such as a renewing contract, incentives for completing work early, or penalties for late delivery.

The expected budget for this project is [$X - $X]. This project will be paid [hourly/at the end of project/at the end of every sprint].

Project schedule

Specify if you have a schedule in mind or if you are flexible with when work begins and when the final product is delivered to you. This will help vendors plan the resources they would need to complete the work within the timeframe you are expecting. You can keep it simple and provide a single delivery date or provide several project milestone dates. For example:

Vendor evaluation criteria

Let vendors know what criteria you will be using to evaluate their proposals. This is critical so that vendors can tailor their proposal to meet your expectations and priorities. For example:

Requirements for proposals

Specify what you want to see in each proposal. Be as detailed as you can here, as the more similarly structured the bids are, the easier they will be to evaluate and compare. For example:

RFP process timeline

Provide vendors visibility into the software development request for proposal process timeline, so that they know what to expect after delivering their bid.

Contact information

Provide the contact information for the project lead or sourcing manager who will be able to answer vendor questions during the RFP process. This doesn’t necessarily need to be the same person who will lead the project during execution.

[Company Name]

[Name of Point of Contact]

[Email]

[Phone Number]