The proposal looked complete. The assumptions told a different story.

Some years ago, I spent time on the other side of the table. As a senior project manager with a global systems integrator, I helped put together a proposal for a large Kinaxis planning program. My part was the effort estimate, the staffing plan, the rate model and the testing approach.

It was a useful education. I saw how these documents come together, usually in a few weeks, written by a team that has only seen the client's program from the outside. Nobody is trying to hide anything. A proposal is written to win the work, and it is based on what the integrator knows at the time, which is not much yet.

So when a client asks me to look at a proposal now, I skip past the vision slides and look for a few specific things.

I start with the estimate. Early estimates are often marked as indicative, sometimes with a range of plus or minus 20 percent. That is fair, but 20 percent of a large program is real money. I want to know what the estimate is based on and what would push it toward the high end.

Next, I read the assumptions and dependencies, usually near the back. This is where a lot of risk moves to the client without anyone saying so. Lines like "the client will provide clean master data" or "all sites can support the data integration" each sound reasonable. Put a dozen of them together, and they can describe a program that does not exist.

Then I look at the staffing plan and ask who is on the team and when they roll off. Senior people often taper off before go-live, which is exactly when you need them on the call. I always ask who will be there on cutover weekend.

Last, I look at testing. Who writes the test scripts? Who provides the test data? How many rounds of integration testing are planned, and what has to be true before user acceptance testing starts? Vague answers here tend to come back later as change requests.

This is not about catching the integrator out. Most of the trouble I have seen starts when two parties sign the same document and read it differently. A careful review before signing is mostly about making sure everyone agrees on the same program.

If you are comparing proposals for a planning or SAP program right now, it helps to have someone look at them who has written one. The Transformation Health Diagnostic covers that kind of review, or we can start with a 30-minute call.