Proposal Managers on GTD?

[friemanw]

Hi. I am a proposal manager and I am wondering if there are others out there. We are on deadline for much of our professional lives. We can't just choose from a bunch of things on our lists what to do now based on context, etc. or based on what is getting our attention. There are things that have to get done each day (different ones each day) or we will miss interim deadlines which could mean a late proposal delivery which means the proposal is not accepted. Often those things take up the entire day for days at a time. I am wondering how others in this field use GTD to schedule proposal tasks. Also wondering if someone at GTD might be interested in collaborating on a specialized GTD tool for this environment? Maybe it already exists and I don't know about it?
Thanks,
Wendy

 

[enyonam]

I have to manage a lot of proposals with varying due dates. Some need to be turned around in a day or two, and some are very large pieces of work that could take several months.

The first thing I did that really made a huge difference in how I use my GTD system to manage proposals was my proposal checklist. It is a generic checklist that specified at the level of tasks and serves as a good reminder of all the things the team needs to consider when writing a proposal. When I start a new proposal I typically create one project and paste the proposal checklist in the notes section as a 'next actions' list which I can continually refer to. My checklist is also organised by headers so if I need to group think on specific areas they go into a mindmap where we can plan out what we need to do with the proposal. This checklist / mindmap becomes my 'control room' for the proposal.

In terms of managing the effort, when I or we have brainstormed out everything we need to do, I keep notations of the level of effort. And note that I record the proposal due date on the project due date. I keep track of the effort per next action (if there is no project plan) so that when I review my total next actions list daily or during my weekly review, I plan ahead for how much time I'll need to work on a particular task. I also do this for my staff so if I see too many oooo's (which is how I record effort) on someone's list I can make sure to have a chat with them about workload and help resolve that as necessary.