Knowledge Paper - Co-published with CIPS.org

We’re very proud to announce, that we recently co-published a knowledge paper about Lean-Agile Procurement together with cips.org - The largest global association for supply management- and procurement professionals.

CIPS-Members

CIPS Members could download the knowledge paper directly on the cips.org knowledge section lean & agile.

Free Download (Registration needed)

Anybody else could also download it for free joining the LAP Community (all free).

UPCOMING - Stay tuned!

The secret Sauce of successful Sourcing (LAP Nuggets - Episode 1)

Have you ever wondered, why some of the strategic sourcing cases failed and others were successful?-In a series of episodes we gonna introduce you, what we’ve learned from our LAP Alliance networks’ multiple engagements and successful sourcing cases with LAP. With the LAP Nuggets we’ve furthermore developed and assembled applicable tools, that are easy to understand and will reduce your risks during strategic sourcing significantly!

In this episode we’d like to introduce you the secret sauce of successful souring - Strategic Alignment!

Initial position

Today companies run a sequential RfX process with a lot of handovers (1), often not by the people that will do the job and less involvement (1) of the real users or customers of the product/service. With Lean-Agile Procurement (short LAP) we overcome these main issues by setting up an agile, cross-functional product development team, that „will do the job“ and highest possible involve of all stakeholders and potential partners (2).

In both approaches complex, strategic sourcing cases still might fail while others are successful. Why is that?-We believe one of the key driver for success is strategic alignment and we’re very bad in it today.

The challenge

In our mandates we recognize a lot of mis-alignment. It starts, that the various functions have divergent business goals, so that we often run into a challenge getting the right people on board. Often the people don’t know the supported company goal of the sourcing case either, nor the business case of the product and it’s purpose, vision, etc. Even though they’ve got this information it’s often a written document, which lets a lot of room for interpretation. No joke, it happened to me in one mandate as I asked the sponsor to repeat his vision for the new product that the sourcing team responded: 

“We understood the written business case 180 degrees different, good you explained it again!”

— Sourcing team in one of our LAP mandates

If you still run a traditional RfX it might be even worse. The business might know it, but it’s mostly intransparent, or gets lost with each handover in the  process. And it’s the same thing by providing the potential partners „just“ an tender document: A lot of room for interpretation and that’s then why the proposals look like they do!

The question is, how should anybody find the right partner/product/service NOT knowing the fundamental direction?!-And how should a partner deliver the „right thing“ within time/budget/quality either?!

From idea to impact with the Lean Procurement Canvas

LAP and the Lean Procurement Canvas foster collaboration between all parties throughout the whole lifecycle of a product or service. Having such a visual tool in place helps to answer all the key questions WHY/WHAT/HOW/WHO and creates alignment by default.

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When we assemble an agile, cross-functional product development team we always „start with WHY“, as Simon Sinek used to say (3). What’s the purpose of this product or service, what’s the company goal we’re supporting with, etc. You might wonder how many companies had no ad hoc answer to this simple questions!

During the process you might develop a cascading strategic alignment from purpose to action for the product to be sourced :

—purpose

——vision

———mission

————goals

—————needs

——————etc.

All of this could be co-created by the team and all stakeholders - especially the users and customer - and summarized on the Lean Procurement Canvas. More advanced teams even do a color-coding of the elements on the canvas. Find below an excerpt of the Lean Procurement Canvas how it could be interpreted.

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Key is the co-creation, even with the potential partners. Without, there will be no strategic alignment!-Eric from AirFrance recently said the following applying LAP in one of their strategic sourcing cases (They co-created 3 proposals simultaneously with 3 potential partners in 1 room using the Lean Procurement Canvas):

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To improve each proposal we do need collaboration and for collaboration we first of all need alignment. That’s why we usually need up to 80% of the time with at the buyer side only to agree on the WHY and WHAT internally first. To come to action it’s fundamental important, that the team, including the partner and it’s main stakeholders, have a joint agreement about the ultimate next goal/s. The challenge we’ve observed is, that even everybody knows SMART (4), we’re all very bad in applying it. I personally find it almost impossible to write a business goal, that is specific, measurable, actionable, relevant or realistic and time-bound. It always felt I needed to be a jack of all trades and it seemed our customers had the same issue.

That’s why we’ve put all our expertise together howto write good business goals and developed the „golden“ LAP Nugget „Business Goals & Key Results“ we’d like to share with you in this blog post. More nuggets are about to come in the next episodes of this series of blog posts.

LAP Nuggets: Business Goals & Key Results

If it comes to an internal agreement with our main stakeholders we do exactly need to know when we will have been successful. Same thing is important for the potential partners to create their proposals and to become e.g. a fundamental aspect of a joint contract too.

“Good practices are never the solution, but could be always a source for inspiration.”

— Mirko Kleiner

In agile I always loved the fact that we slice complex customer needs down to slices, that are achievable within days or hours and could be further prioritised. We furthermore agree on the acceptance criterias even before we start implementation. A similar concept is used some abstraction levels higher with the OKR’s (5). The Objective and Key Results have been one of our main source of inspiration writing better business goals. We enhanced the concept by further aspects specifically for LAP and created the LAP Nuggets „Business Goals & Key Results“. 

Please note: Important to understand is that all of our LAP Nuggets are not prescriptive to run LAP or use the Lean Procurement Canvas. Majority of users still use just sticky notes. As every good practice one size doesn’t fit it all, but could always be a source for inspiration!-Btw. You might use them in other contexts as well :-)

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If you’re familiar with OKR’s it’ll be obvious to you. Each Business Goal consist of a card „Business Goal“ and one or more „Key Results“. From my point of view is it this seperation, that makes it much easier to define faster, better business goals!

To make it more easy to understand find below a rough example of a startup, that wants to become the #1 eBike rental-service provider.

Business Goal - example

In comparison to the OKR’s we added the:

• Strategic classification, which gives the team some background of the strategic areas this case is supporting

• Rank / weight, which foster a discussion about priority and weighting of multiple business goals. This gets relevant e.g. if we gather customer needs. In case the business goal is just minor important we shouldn’t waste our time in gathering too much customer needs.

• Checklist, which leads us with the most important aspects in writing good business goals

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Key Result

In comparison to the OKR’s we added the:

• ID, which help us referring to the rank of a business goal, or from e.g. customer needs, etc.

• Owner / Progress, which owns and tracks it. The key result could be achieved within hours or days, but also months.

• Checklist, which leads us with the most important aspects in writing good key results

As you could imagine we value from an alignment point of view the co-creation and involvement of all sttakeholders more than the result!-Nevertheless it’s also much more effective if it comes to questions with stakeholders, a new person need to be introduced, etc. if the team has all the main informations on the Lean Procurement Canvas hanging at the wall :-)

Learnings

• Business Goals give a clear direction for the team and to all it’s stakeholders what to expect from the product/service to be build and/or sourced

• Writing Business Goals is hard and patterns such as the LAP Nugget „Business Goals & Key Results“ could help

• Development of Business Goals always is a team effort. In other words „the process of development is more important than the result!“

• Visualization during Alignment helps coming back to it more easily and getting the big picture on one view

• Without an alignment about the WHY we source, nor having an idea about the supporting company goal we better shouldn’t start sourcing as we might head in the wrong direction

FREE Download 

All our LAP Nuggets are open source and could be download FREE of charge for self-printing. The nuggets are available in different colors and contains examples, sources.

Please note: During checkout process you’ll be asked for payment details. In case you added just FREE product only you could ignore it.

In the next episode

In the next blog post we'll answer the question “Does Agile Sourcing mean to have no Plan?”. Expect more useful LAP Nuggests and stay tuned!

Author

Sources

(1) Lean-Agile Procurement Alliance, 2019

(2) LAP Approach, https://www.lean-agile-procurement/approach 

(3) Simon Sine, golden circle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPYeCltXpxw

(4) SMART creteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria

(5) Objectives & key results by OKRs Andrew Grove, Intel

Image sources

• Head-image https://www.fortheheartskitchen.com/mega-knusprige-vegane-golden-nuggets/

• All other images by LAP Alliance

What means Agile from a Procurement point view?

If you’d ask 10 agile coaches you’ll get 11 answers what agile means to them. You’d argue isn’t there one definition for it?-Sure there is, the „Agile Manifesto 2001“, but everybody does it’s interpretation slightly different. Inspired by the blog post „Building Agile Partnerships - Lean Agile Procurement“ by Simon Reindl, Certified LAP Trainer recently wrote about Lean-Agile Procurement I’d like to share what agile means to me from a procurement point of view. Therefor we’ll also refer to the agile manifesto.

Big thanks goes also to Philipp Engstler, Certified LAP Trainer & Board Member LAP Alliance who first came up with the idea of linking the Agile Manifesto to our work with Lean-Agile Procurement.

The Procurement’s Dilemma

Before we could dive into  the topic agile we need to understand where procurement is up to today. We live in an exciting, rapidly developing world where it’s possible, for example, to print an aircraft engine within 72 hours (1). Commodity sourcing cases are increasingly digitized or taken over by machines. That leaves the complex, mostly strategic sourcing cases for which our existing tools such as Rfi, Rfp, Reverse Auction, etc. are inadequate (2). 

In other words, we need new approaches to deliver added value to the business faster and so to stay relevant as procurement 

What it means if procurement knows just one tool, e.g. a hammer every problem looks like a nail!-In other words classic sourcing approaches such as RfI/RfP are more than 120 years old and where thought to solve slightly different challenges. Don’t get me wrong, those are still valid for commodity sourcing cases. But if we try to apply these old receipts to source complex products/services or similar we run into the Procurement’s dilemma.

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To cope with a lot of uncertainty in complex sourcing cases such as e.g. sourcing a new ERP we’d need to invest a lot of time and sweat in scope definition or specification. As we’re aware of the expensiveness of the sourcing approach we know that we’ll have just this one-time shot. This will lead to a „scope-explosion“ and this to a long contract periode for it’s delivery. With this huge investment in figuring out an as detailed specification as possible we accumulate incredible amount of risks and slow-down our time to market.

But what’s the alternative?-Lets imagine we’d be able to source within hours or days. We’d run the approach more often. However, this doesn’t come for free. We’d need to accept a reduced scope, usually specified in less details too e.g. goal-based. This would lead to an improved time-to-market and less risks and a shorter contract periode. With Lean-Agile Procurement we demand exactly that, as we accept uncertainty and upcoming changes with the first customer feedback.

Aligned to the Agile Manifesto

If we come back to the  Agile Manifesto 2001, you’ll realize that Lean-Agile Procurement is completely aligned to it. 

PS: There is an important note to understand the If Agile Manifesto (head-lines) if you’re newby: The first paragraph is always more important than the second, while we still need the 2nd paragraph.

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

To overcome The Procurement’s Dilemma we need to start thinking out of our „silo“ or function and start collaboration with all stakeholders - especially the real users or customers - in the current process from the beginning. The lightweight nature of the Lean Procurement Canvas highlights having cross functional, empowered people engaged in the process from all parties. The canvas provides a structure for the right conversations to be held to achieve an agreement.

Working software product over comprehensive documentation

As with a lot of organisations that are using the manifesto to guide their work, the product has not to be software! The product is the alignment within internal stakeholders and an agreement with partner between organisations in order to solve a particular problem or build a particular product. Through that alignment starting with WHY, the vision, the business goals, etc. over to the WHAT, the customer needs to the HOW, potential solutions, etc. we ensure that we always focus to the RIGHT and most important things first. After the sourcing we always demand incremental delivery to ask for customer feedback as early as possible. This allows us to adapt at any time.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

This is the game changing aspect of this approach. The finished canvas is a contract, that has been built collaboratively! The emphasis of the workshop approach is to create a meaningful dialogue between all prospective partners and the company, who collaboratively shape the contract. In practice we co-create an agile contract with e.g. 3 vendors simultaneously in 1 room, so that we could decide right away and continue value delivery.

Responding to change over following a plan

Using this approach there is an opportunity to learn in an iterative, incremental and collaborative way. What may have taken weeks before is now reduced to days – with less space for misunderstanding. With such approach we dramatically decrease risks and stay as flexible as possible. Needless to mention that working like this needs a mind shift 180°!

Thanks to the agile Manifesto, which always was and still is a great inspiration we’ve created our Mission Statement for Lean-Agile Procurement in a similar „A instead of B“. We’re curious about your feedback about it?

OUR MISSION

Days instead of Months
Needs instead of Wants
Adaptive instead of Fixed
Partnership instead of Relationship
FUN instead of PAIN

Author

Sources

(1) Additive Manufacturing, GE 2016
(2) Survey/research about agile@procure- ment & sales, flowdays, Switzerland, 2018 

Case Study with Amnesty International France - Talk-show Video

Talk-show style interview of the very first LAP initiative in France involving Amnesty International France (the client), Troopers Web Republic (the winning Partner) and Goood (the LAP trainer and coach)The interview focuses on how all 3 parties (Amnesty, Troopers and Goood) lived the experience.


This is a video capture of a conference held for Web2Day 2019 in Nantes, June 2019 in French.

Authors & Lead Coaches

Keynote Article in THE PROCUREMENT MAGAZINE - This is the dawning of the age of agility

Lets change the game
with Lean-Agile Procurement

by Mirko Kleiner & Philipp Engstler

This Article has got published in THE PROCUREMENT MAGAZINE 2019-05 as lead article. It was also hand-out at their procurement awards. A big thanks goes to Micol Barba, Editorial Manager - Editor in chief at THE PROCUREMENT ITALIA, who is a strong supporter of our movement Lean-Agile Procurement!

Not just a new approach, but a new mindset, even a new age is needed to cope with the upcoming market demands. Cases using this new mindset have been proofed to source complex cases in as little as one day! No wonder do companies such as Barclays, Gazprom, Air France, etc. radically tran- sform their organisation and so their strategic procurement.

We live in an exciting, rapidly developing world where it’s possible, for example, to print an aircraft engine within 72 hours (1). Commodity sourcing cases are increasin- gly digitized or taken over by machines. That leaves the complex, mostly strategic sourcing cases for which our existing tools such as Rfi, Rfp, Reverse Auction, etc. are inadequate (2).

In other words, we need new approaches to deliver added value to the business fa- ster and so to stay relevant as procurement

“It’s a matter of delivering fast added value as procurement”

— Stephan Chassaing de Bourdeille,former Vice head of group procurement, Axel Springer SE

How do we meet the challenges of in- creasing complexity and the demand for rapid time-to-market? The startup scene has already shown how it can be done. They use approaches such as Lean Startup (3), Scrum/Agile (4), or the Bu- siness Model Canvas (5), and they have absorbed uncertainty into their DNA. Benefiting from their experience, lean-agi- le procurement (6) opens up completely new possibilities for procurement, sales and partner management.

DESIGNED FOR ADAPTIVE, STRATEGIC SOURCING

Lean-Agile Procurement is an approach that can be used in both direct and indirect sourcing (6). Originally developed for the sourcing of agile development teams in di- gitalization, it is now used in all categories and industries (2).

The prerequisite is a high level of com- plexity in terms of sourcing content or organization, which is usually the case in strategic sourcing. It is unsuitable for com- modity sourcing, where it may even gene- rate unnecessary overhead.

Barclays for example has started begin of 2018 to organize more than 100 people in pods (stable, cross-functional) teams. Idea is that these pods could handle complex, strategic cases as team much faster, than handing them over and over again. Their numbers showed, that they were able to increase lead time radically.

FOUR TIMES FASTER FROM IDEA TO FIRST VALUE DELIVERED

The awarded success story of the CKW Group (7), an energy company in Switzer- land with 1,700 employees and a turnover of ~850 million, showed that with Lean-Agile Procurement complex sourcing cases can be successfully processed in 4-5 weeks.

While this could be done twice as fast without a problem as this included team setup, learning on the job, etc. Even though this represents four times faster time-to-market compared to classic ap- proaches (4). New ideas can be introduced and tested in the market much faster, and the generated return occurs much earlier. Companies applying Lean-Agile Procure- ment have a competitive advantage with direct impact on the company’s success. From a customer perspective this means a much faster availability of new services and/or products and high reduction of cost-of-delay. Focusing on time-to-market changes everything for procurement!

“This is a game changer”

— Phil Thomas, Managing Director, Head of global sourcing at Barclays

~80% SAVINGS THROUGH ALIGNMENT AND FOCUS

In complex sourcing cases, especially strategic sourcing, there is a very high de- gree of uncertainty as to what the custo- mer or market needs (8). This makes it all the more important to focus first on the most important business goals (why) and customer needs (what), and only after that on solutions or products (how).

During the development of a new busi- ness case we should already be entering into an intensive interaction with our custo- mers and continuously collecting feedback (3). Instead of creating huge specification documents it’s recommanded to have e.g. representatives of all customer segments in one room and directly ask them for their needs, priority, etc., we are using the Lean Procurement Canvas(6) to capture this. By consistently focusing on the most impor- tant customer needs we simultaneously increase our alignment, push nice-to-ha- ve’s to the back of the queue, and minimize unnecessary effort (4).

RADICAL RISK REDUCTION THROUGH ADAPTABILITY

Tighter focus leads to smaller batches, which allow for increasingly faster sour- cing, which in turn makes it possible to prolong or even change a partner/product/ etc. more easily (6). The overheads incur- red by suppliers, legal, etc. are reduced and incremental deliveries ensure a fun- ctional solution at all times. The fact that customer feedback is collected after each iteration ensures that the solution meets the initial expectations. This requires new, more agile contracts (9) with which a part- nership can be adapted, or even stopped, at any time. This radically reduces risk.

Current cases that applied this principle e.g. co-created the contract with their po- tential partners in one room simultanuo- usly. Doing so open questions, concerns could have been resolved immediately. Even more than that cost drivers could have been identified much earlier and adapted jointly even before starting the cooperation.

~50% MORE EFFICIENT ECONOMICALLY

Complex sourcing cases are corre- spondingly complex to implement. With Lean-Agile Procurement we reduce the overheads on the buyer side by an average of 50% (2). This is mainly achieved by set- ting up a cross-functional team of experts, that can do the job. Having an empowered team together reduces decision-latency to the minimum, so that things develop much faster.

The reduction of effort on the suppliers’ side should also not be underestimated. From an economic point of view, what we are achieving is an optimization of non-va- lue-adding work (10), which ultimately has a direct effect on market performance and the associated success of the company.

COLLABORATION INCREASES INNOVATION

Uncertainty about customer needs can only be minimized through direct inte- raction with customers and users. Consul- tation occurs not just once, but continues throughout the entire procurement process and beyond. Not just the customers but the providers too are included and bring their ideas into the discussion.

A common understanding of customer needs leads to simpler solutions, better collaboration, and new ideas (2). That’s why it’s recommended to ask for a joint wor- kshop with the potential partner/s, where both parties bring in the people that might cooperate and do the job.

Being agile is a mindset and we need to ensure even before we go into a partner- ship, that we have a social fit too. Often we run a proof-of-concept in parallel to the co-creation of an agile contract. This way the delivery capabilities and the behaviors of the people in the room could be obser- ved while actually working. If we invite e.g. at the end of each day the real users we even get direct feedback for new innovative ideas implemented.

TRUE PARTNERSHIP — BOTH SIDES WIN

Strategic sourcing is a two-way street. It requires an attitude of trust cooperation based on partnership and shared values (6). Binding contracts and cost focus are usually to the disadvantage of one party and do not lead to a genuine partnership.

While in Lean-Agile Procurement the hard facts of quality, costs, etc. remain important, social facts, such as the beha- viour of potential suppliers in concrete si- tuations, become just as important, if not more so, as issues are worked out during contract fullfillment.

This leads to fundamental changes in behaviour not only towards partners but also within the company itself (10). This has consequences for the reputation, loyalty, and indirectly also for the motivation and work performance of each individual em- ployee (2).

In one case a new ERP has got sourced in just two days (!) with three potential part- ners in one room simulaneously. The buyer side decided as a team for one partner, but asked for another person from another competitor to join their team. This wouldn’t be possible sending papers back-n-forth.

HIGHER PRODUCTIVITY

Lean-Agile Procurement makes the exi- sting sourcing process more efficient, whi- le focusing on being more effective – doing the right things. In an uncertain environ- ment (8) this also means saying goodbye to detailed specifications, and accepting that anything can change at any time. In today’s smart business development scene the Business Model Canvas (5) is a living document and 100-page business cases are a thing of the past. With Lean-Agile Procurement we demand the same, and the Lean Procurement Canvas provides it.

“Speed is the new currencyof business”

— Marc Bemopff, Ceo Salesforce

EARLIER RETURN AND FAST FEEDBACK CYCLES IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN COSTS

With innovative ideas, it is more important to learn from customer feedback and to be ahead of the competition than to optimize the last few percent of costs. Because we are only sourcing in small batches, the risk of a bad investment remains small (3).

It’s not any more a question if agile will become a topic for procurement, then in most companies agile transformation pro- grams are already in progress. Full stack business agility require an agile acting procurement departmenet, start experi- ments with agile practices, approaches such as Lap and see what of it makes sen- se in your context.

• Lean-Agile Procurement is a proven ap- proach for indirect and direct sourcing in all categories where the sourcing case has a certain complexity. Applied in commodity sourcing cases it creates unnecessary overhead.

• It is a practical approach that improves time-to-market significantly and radically decreases risk through incremental and value-added funding for improved busi- ness outcomes.

• Lean-Agile Procurement has a sustainable impact on the way we work together, both internally and with our partners – because the soft facts are evaluated by the very people who are going to be working together.

• With Lean-Agile Procurement it is once again possible to deliver added value to the business faster and thus remain relevant as procurement.

For more information go to: https://www. lean-agile-procurement.com

Magazine

To order the magazine goto:

https://www.theprocurement.it

The original article could be download here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1EyJC-MLPJqsfTM99dbZYI2A7fo5RUY1f

Autors

(1) Additive Manufacturing, GE 2016
(2) Survey/research about agile@procure-ment & sales, flowdays, Switzerland, 2018(3) The lean startup by Eric Ries
(4) For example: “Twice the work in half of thetime” by Dr. Jeff Sutherland, co-creator of SCRUM, author and founder of Scrum Inc.(5) Business Model Canvas, Alex Osterwalder(6) lean-procurement.com & Lean Procure-ment Canvas by Mirko Kleiner, flowdays
(7) “CKW case study”, CKW & flowdays, 2018 (8) Complexity theory by R. Stacey, 2019
(9) See agile contracts at e.g. http://www. flexiblecontracts.com
or http://www.vestedway.com, 2019
(10) Decision latency, www.scrumatscale. com 2019 (11) Pull system by Lean Manu-facturing 2019”

Rolling out Lean Agile Procurement at BNP Paribas: A retrospective.

GUEST Blog Post: We’re proud to co-publish and share with you a very honest retrospective by Reeve Randriamananjara rolling out Lean-Agile Procurement at BNP Paribas. He described his journey from being infected by the LAP virus in one of our public workshop, over convincing his stakeholders at BNP Paribas to actually executing a first pilot. Thanks so much for sharing your story and we’re keen on your further developments with LAP@BNP Paribas :-)

The training

1 March 2018: Snowstorm in Switzerland. All planes going to Geneva had been grounded. Luckily my plane was heading to Zurich. However I only had confirmation that I was going to fly a couple of hours before the check-in at Brussels airport. From Basel, I had to take the train to Rotkreuz, home to the pharma giant, Roche. Rotkreuz was also where my one-day Lean Agile Procurement training was going to take place on the following day. But what was I exactly looking for?

Well, I was on a mission to challenge myself and take my 15-year IT procurement experience to another level. For over a decade, I had always been facing the same challenge: lengthy sourcing processes (request for proposals or RFP's, that is), poor alignment with project teams and, occasionally, conflicts with the vendors around the signed contracts.

There was a permanent debate between us, buyers, who demand that our IT colleagues wrote down 100% of their requirements as a condition to send out an RFP. My colleagues, on the other hand, needed a fast sourcing or procurement process, seeing it as necessary pain. Something was structurally wrong and it was high time we changed our ways. This is where I had decided to embrace Lean Agile Procurement.

What is Lean Agile Procurement?

 "I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.” - Woody Allen.

As Woody says it, Lean Agile Procurement is difficult to put in a nutshell.

It is an Agile procurement or sourcing framework that allows businesses to find solutions for complex and/or strategic IT projects; complex as in "we don't know what our customers want exactly and there isn't an off-the-shelf piece of software for that".

What it takes is a clear vision and part of the required features. More importantly, Lean Agile Procurement vows to reduce the time it takes to search, find and select the most appropriate vendor for a project. It claims to do so in days or weeks instead of months. And that's bold!

Lean Agile Procurement basically merges the RFI (request for information), RFP and contracting processes in a couple of daily workshops with the vendors. It invites people on either side of the negotiation table to fully cooperate by being transparent, focused and bringing the right people around. Last, the canvas is Lean Agile Procurement's keystone.

The framework is heralded by the folks at Flowdays. Mirko Kleiner tirelessly preaches all over the world. Interestingly Mirko doesn't have a buyer profile at all.

Complex projects have the following features: Those who sponsor them take strong commitments vis-a-vis the top management who, in turn, take commitments with the market and customers. Additionally innovation is the bottom line. So there is a huge constraint and expectation in marketing the right output the sooner the better. If either the deadline is missed or the deliverable is of poor quality, your competitor will move ahead and the organization will be left behind dealing with project cost overrunning, litigation with vendors and more stress on extended project team members to fix things.

Lean Agile Procurement promises to satisfactorily address the issue. Yet, to paraphrase the definition of Scrum: Lean Agile Procurement is simple to understand and difficult to master.

What Lean Agile Procurement is not or can't do

Lean Agile Procurement is not a miraculous therapy for dandruff, stinky armpits and smelly feet.

•  It isn't advisable if the product or service you are looking for is neither complex nor strategic. On the contrary, using it for everything will be counter-productive for your organization.

• It can't be the last resort to hastily shortcut procurement processes for ill-thought projects.

• It takes a huge toll on your workload; meaning that all other topics will have to be postponed until the process is done. Believe me when it is, all other topics will pop up again and hit you hard.

• If Agile values and principles are neither fully understood nor shared nor trusted, don't go for it. You will end up perverting the system and cutting corners.

So now, how did we do for our first project?

Finding candidate projects

Once I have received my Lean Agile Procurement certificate, I was full of hope and eager to implement the method as soon as possible. I quickly identified a first project in the same month. Of course, the project team was in a hurry and they asked me to advise on the best sourcing approach. I gave them the choice between the classical RFP and the experimental Lean Agile Procurement. They shrugged off the latter and eventually opted to stick to the standard process. Eventually, 8 months later, the RFP was dropped. What a disappointment.

Later in October 2018, a colleague asked to brief him about the standard procurement process and lead times for a strategic project. I told him to start filling the Request for Information (RFI) template documents with his requirements. I also warned him that it may take up to 6 months to have a contract ready for signature. He shared my warnings to the project team members. One of them called me back asking me if there was a way to make it in 2 months because they had to select a vendor by end of December.

So I took a poker face and told her quietly that I had a solution. The only trade-off I requested was everybody's full availability and dedication during those 2 months. And it worked.

From my initial procurement plan…

 Initially my plan was:

1. Send out a concise RFI with our vision, a description of our project, what we are looking for with a handful of requirements and leave the vendors 2 weeks to reply.

2. Analyze the answers and shortlist vendors for the workshops.

3. Invite the shortlisted vendors to come and attend a 1st workshop and share their questions with us and their competitors.

4. Prepare the Lean Agile Procurement canvas in order to share it with the vendors during the 2nd and 3rd workshops.

5. Invite all shortlisted vendors to come and attend a 2nd workshop and start collaborating using the canvas as the guidelines for the negotiations. The draft of contract would also be filled in. At the end of the day, we would share our feedbacks with the vendors and shortlist a few (i.e. 1 or 2) for the 3rd workshop.

6. Invite the shortlisted vendors to come and attend a 3rd and last iteration of the workshops. Again feedbacks to the vendors right at the end of the sessions.

7. Submit our vendor recommendation to the steering committee and confirm the award to the selected vendor.

8. Sign the contract and kick the project off.

… to our final procurement plan.

This is what we eventually did:

1. We wrote a 6-page RFI. The project team felt more comfortable with annexing a spreadsheets that contains requirements such as a fair list of features, a high level project, technical, operations, legal, commercial, ethics and vendor due diligence (i.e. financial risk assessment).

2. We elaborated an RFI balanced score card for the requirements we have listed. The format I have suggested has been discarded in favour of an old one everyone else was comfortable with.

3. We invited all vendors to attend the 1st workshop. However we didn't anticipate that vendors wouldn't speak their minds as they were surprised to find each other in the same meeting room!

4. Broadcasting the Lean Agile Procurement canvas received a lukewarm welcome among the team. In other words, nobody wanted to leave it in the clear. So we used the RFI score card structure as the guideline for our negotiations.

5. We held one workshop per vendor. The project team thought it was disrespectful to vendors to have them all in the same session and do a beauty contest. This was obviously more exhausting: Instead of one day with all vendors, it was a full week of 4-hour workshop with each. Also our legal team didn't wish to participate leaving the contracting as the last step of the process. As I expected it, this added another two intense weeks after the December deadline.

6. The last workshop worked well but was equally demanding.

7. There were a few requests from the steering committee that led to an extra-negotiation over the phone and via e-mails with the selected vendor. I expected this so no specific issue there.

8. The contract negotiations added some delay but it was great to see that those who participated to the workshops earlier on either side were perfectly aligned. So two weeks to close a contract in a fair constructive way wasn't bad at all.

The check list for success

 Here are my recommendations for a successful Lean Agile Procurement:

• Ensure people are available and focused during the workshops. This is a strong prerequisite. This entails everybody to be in the same place and participate (no multitasking).

• Prepare sufficient training and communication for the people who will be involved.

• An reciprocal non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is compulsory as usual. Your organization must have a template available. Note that a vendor that is too picky at NDA stage must be discarded. It is usually a bad sign.

• Keep your RFI content concise. 5 pages are recommended. Sentences must be clear and short. Avoid unnecessary (procurement and legal) jargon.

• The canvas is a must. It is difficult to draft if your mind is unclear. If you can't fill then you are neither ready to share your vision and objective nor ready to engage in a transparent and constructive conversation with the vendors. All your organization project documents must serve as annexes to the canvas.

• People (including all vendors) must be in the same room. Forget concerns about a vendor stealing new features from their competitors and releasing it fully-tested by the time the RFP is awarded. It is very unlikely to happen.

• The sponsors must participate to the workshops. They can't just be the "second negotiation table behind the scene" acting like the hidden puppet masters of the negotiations.

• Brief your project team members that they have to be very demanding with the vendors. Similarly, prepare them to be equally put on the grill by the vendors. Gone are the days where the mighty client knows it all and the vendor just executes.

• Still, it is acceptable not to have all vendors attending the same workshops. Keep in mind that this is more exhausting and vendors will attempt to regain control over the process by playing the game they know (i.e. the sales rep running the show and the other guys remaining silent for 4 hours).

• A 4-hour long demo is the best basis for the workshop interactions. So request your vendor to come ready. The canvas will be filled in by the buyer and the sales person.

• The inputs of the workshops must immediately fill the annexes of the future contract. So again, have the contractual structure ready and shared. Leave the main body of the contract to the lawyers though.

Lessons learnt and achievements

•  Lesson #1: Don't assume that those who blame lengthy procurement processes are ready to change them and adhere to Lean Agile Procurement.

• Lesson #2: Use the project's time constraint as an advantage to market the Lean Agile Procurement method internally.

• Lesson #3: Keep in mind that anything in Agile can adapt and improve. So procurement dogma don't always apply here.

• Lesson #4: Vendors are wary of their competitors. You have to factor that in when explaining the process and the project. Keep reminding them what the process is good for.

• In just one attempt, we managed to reduce to procurement lead time from 6+ months to 4 months. 1 cumulated month was sufficient for all workshops and contract negotiations. Also, Lean Agile Procurement has demonstrated that the Procurement department is a trusted partner for ambitious projects. To my surprise, we received very positive feedbacks from both sponsors and… vendors. And the word is spreading around faster than expected.

Conclusion

 I reckon I did find what I was looking for when I attended the Lean Agile Procurement training on a snowy day in Switzerland. So I will keep pushing. You might try it too.

For more information about Lean Agile Procurement, get in touch with Flowdays (https://flowdays.net/en/home) (https://www.lean-agile-procurement.com/#home/comparison).

From more information about Scrum (an Agile framework), read the Scrum guide (https://www.scrumguides.org/docs/scrumguide/v2017/2017-Scrum-Guide-US.pdf) 

Before you leave this page:

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Original source of the blog post:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/rolling-out-lean-agile-procurement-retrospective-randriamananjara/

Author

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Reeve Randriamananjara

IT Procurement Specialist.
BNP Paribas Asset Management

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In a fast changing world is the team the main asset!

Côte d’Azure in France, April 25+26 2019 - Together with guests from Air France KLM and David Kershaw from the UK Cabinet office we spent 2 days on our first LAP Retreat 2019, exchanging, challenging, developing Lean-Agile Procurement (short LAP) and most important had some fun & beers!-This blog post is a short summary about and why our concussing was valid for us as well: „In a fast changing world the team is the main asset!“

Who were „we“?-The main attendees were the members of the LAP Alliance, the Certified LAP Trainers. To get an outside view we invited members of the recent success story with LAP at Air France KLM as well with David a representative from the public procurement/GOV. We’ve got hosted by 2 of our members Sophie and Lionel from Good!. A big thank you again for that!

We had great exchanges, we’re able to align towards a joint strategy and even developed new things, just awesome!-I for my side enjoyed it a lot.

A brief summary of our achievements:

• Great exchanges with our guests from Air France KLM and with David Kershawfrom the UK Cabinet Office (involved in the Brexit)

• Intensive exchanges, challenging our approaches, even the strategy of LAP, so that we became all better as a team

• Gathering quotes and exchanging about further success stories

• Understanding public procurement, it’s challenges and drafting how LAP could be applied

• Develop new things like e.g. 1st drafts of visualizations about LAP in general and the Big Room Evaluation Day (so called POCATHON)

• Sharing LAP to a bigger audience in France via the first LAP Conference together with Air France KLM 

We’d like to share with you the following out of this exciting 2 days.

1st LAP Conference

In the evening of the 1st day Sophie and Lionel organized our very first LAP Conference for and with their customers/community. It was setup as private event and almost 40 people showed up, mostly with a procurement background. The event was kicked of by Damien, also Certified LAP Trainer and the found of goood!.

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His talk about „Building a Sustainable Business“ showed very good, why we should include our partners and need to start treating them as such. Furthermore it’s no more a choice of being „just“ profitable but also responsible. And that in a fast changing world the team becomes an intangible asset!-We couldn’t agree more on that!

Lean-Agile Procurement Gathering 2019, Nice, France. from Damien Thouvenin

To achieve that he closed with the statement „We need to BREAK with all the RULES, but not the LAW“. In other words if we find and enable the mavericks in our businesses only we will overcome the current traps.

Air France KLM Success Story

After Damiens talk Frederic and Eric representing their Air France KLM team shared their success story with LAP in an interview style. AF KLM is already operating mostly agile, but the sourcing was done in a classic approach still and they saw very fast the benefits of LAP and were confident to rock it with the help of Sophie and Lionel. 

Frederic started the interview, that it was quit a difficult project for him. He was new to AF KLM Cargo and they didn’t knew the partners either. The organization at AF KLM is furthermore highly distributed (Nizza, Amsterdam, Paris, …). At this moment they had less trust, that the vendors will provide the right people and a new approach to source a partner for their new Tracking Solution was very welcome.

It’s important to mention, that LAP wasn’t applied full stack. The pre-selection of the shortlisted vendors and the final contract negotiations have been done in a classic approach. However, to choose the right partner they all met in Amsterdam for 2 days in the center of AF KLM Cargo. The potential parters should show up with the people that will do the job and the ones with the commercial background too. 

“Instead of eliminating the less promising offers, we ended up improving each proposal and choosing the best one!”

— Eric Chaumette, Managed Delivery Centers Program Management Air France

They have recognized from first hands how the vendor is organized, how they run the proof-of-concept (POC) and how decisions have been taken. E.g. one vendor showed up with 7 commercial people and decision taking was very painful with them. As on the other hand another vendor could take decisions right away. During the POC they run 1/2 day iterations and demoed at the end of each iterations their results to the real users at CARGO. At the end of the 2 days they decided and continued working with the partner the week after!-Ericmentioned something very interesting: Instead of eliminating the less promising offers, we ended up improving each proposal together with the potential partner and then we've chosen the best of it!

“The team building with the partner has been done mostly within the 2 days!”

— Air France KLM

„It seemed that the team building has been done within the 2 days right away!“, they said.-Interesting to hear was, that the initial ranking from the RfP had changed seeing the partners and their people in action.

Frederic and his team are very satisfied with the results of LAP and will apply it to future complex sourcing cases with AF KLM. One more time we’d like to thank Frederic and his team for sharing their case with us and the LAP community.

SwissCasinos Success Story - How we sourced an ERP in just 2 days!

Before the QnA session I had the pleasure to introduce LAP based on our latest full stack success story with SwissCasinos Group, that has sourced an ERP in just 2 days!-Full stack in a sense of setting up an agile, cross-functional product team with people that will do the job from the start. So became e.g. Daniel Pellegrini, Head of Finance & Board Member at SC Group, the Product Owner of this initiative. He and his team will be in charge not just for the sourcing, but the whole product life cycle. This is in his interest, as he knows exactly where he wants to develop that topic at SC Group.

LAP Conference 2019 Cote d'Azure, France mirko-kleiner from waioblue

In other words we started as early as possible with the right people. In addition to the AF KLM case we also co-created and signed the agile contract by the end of the 2nd day of the partner workshop. Therefor we needed beside procurement, decision takers, legal, etc. just everybody needed from both parties at the table.

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Did you recognize how many we’ve mentioned „the right people“ and „team“?-Yes a lot!-Coming back to our initial hypothesis „In a fast changing world is the team the main asset!“ I personally can confirm, this!-I’ve felt it during the LAP Retreat, while hearing the story of AF KLM and I've got remembered by every success story we’ve done so far!

I can just recommend everybody out there: „give it more of a weight, the social facts are as important as the hard facts! “

We had a lot of fun too and this comes with true social fit for free :-)

Cheers 

Mirko

Co-founder of flowdays, Creator Lean-Agile Procurement

Agile@Procurement - Down under takes over!

During our exciting 2-days Lean-Agile Procurement certification workshop in Auckland some of the participants came and said to us: „Wow this is so awesome, but our boss/peers/etc needs to know about that too!“-As agile we are we setup some FREE one hour slots called Lean Coffee’s, where those participants could invite wherever they liked. This blog post is about what we’ve experienced & learned during those coffee sessions. Be aware, down under is about to take over the Lean-Agile Procurement movement!

As usual we had a very diverse group of 25 attendees in our 2-days certification workshop Lean-Agile Procurement (short LAP) in Auckland. Consisting of procurement and sales professionals, agile coaches, digital experts, even some lawyers. We haven’t had just a big diversity between roles and companies, but also on levels. From c-suite, CPO’s over strategic buyer/account manager to Program Managers, etc. we had almost the whole value stream represented. A very good base for open minded exchanges and one of the reason I personally like to work in that domain. Did I mentioned that we've been SOLD OUT!?

However, during the workshop 2-3 attendees came across and told us, that their peers should know about LAP too, because they thought it would bring so much value to their work/business/etc too. That was the moment, where we decided on the spot to offer some 1-hour FREE Lean Coffee sessions. Within minutes the slots were taken by the attendees for various reasons I suppose: Convincing their boss/peers, inspiring other departments, or getting some like-minded people together to start their first pilot project using LAP right away.

We had a comprehensive list of businesses from private and public sector to visit:

• Air New Zealand

• Tower Insurance

• Vodafone

• University of Auckland

• ASZ

Day after the workshop we started our first lean coffee session.

Air New Zealand

Jakub Jurkiewicz an enthusiastic Agile Coach at Air NZ asked for this session and made it happen, that we’ve been part of the team meeting of the whole #procurement team of Alistair Prebble, Head of Procurement Air NZ. Some more guys from the digital department squeezed in too so that the room was full.

Each party shared their current status, learnings and pitfalls. It felt like we‘ve cooperated already for years.

It turned out that the procurement team and their digital team has experimented much more as the average company we‘ve met so far. For commodity sourcing cases they‘ve invested in Lean Procurement and digitalization from source to pay as many other company. 

In digital initiatives they‘ve experimented with more collaborative tenders as we did with LAP. They haven‘t gone as far as we did but they for sure will now they‘ve seen how!

Even more interesting to see was that the procurement team of Air NZ has started to make their work visible using Kanban Boards. They are just one step before creating cross-functional teams as Barclays did.

Vodafone

Right after the Business Agility Meetup I went with Jörg Breitenberger, Agile Coach with Vodafone, to a Lean Beer and we had a good exchange about agile transitions, pitfalls and how this could drive enthusiastic employees into demotivated ones. Our key conclusion was we need to onboard everybody, especially the top management so that everybody understands why we‘re becoming agile and how.

Tower Insurance

Bruce McClintock, an extraordinary person with a background in law, economics, IT and Agile wanted to get us in touch with Stu Waddington a like-minded program manager at Tower Insurance. He runs currentely one of the biggest program at Tower in digitalization and we had a lot of stories to share about. One key takeaway was that getting the #RIGHTpartner is key. Especially if we have to deal with a lot of uncertainty and surprises as we go. They‘ve shared their current contractual setup where Tower has agreements on packes of story points with their partners. It works out very good with them, but we shared our concerns about it with them. Because it might be a risk if the partner is in control of the kpi he gets mesured and payed. 

The way how they currentely source is quit traditional and takes a lot of time in a complex environment, what a surprise. They’ve might got some inspiration from LAP for future projects.

University of Auckland 

Xian Fu organised a session with David Rees‘ procurement team and representatives from project management. The university of Auckland is under #publicLaw and we had very interesting and open minded discussions how to apply LAP at #GOV. They run all digitalization already in an #Agile setup and to our surprise David spoke about how they’ve source in a more collaborative approach even before the agile movement 20-30 years ago. We encouraged them to publish the way they did and they definately toke some inspiration out of LAP. Such as to improve the collection of customer needs in a more collaborative approach.

ASB Bank

Last but not least Lean Coffee session was organised by Kerry Walden and she brought us in touch with Mark Jones, General Manager Procurement ASB Bank and Chris from their digital department.

They started the exchange we #DONT run classic tenders any more. We tend to get in touch with our partners, agree on just 3-4 pages contracts and gather customer needs eg. via design thinking workshops.

On the other hand they do have room for improvement in automization of commodity sourcing cases. Or may be I‘ve got them wrong?

What they did naturally we‘d call the #futureOfProcurement. They‘ve started to establish #businessPartnerships and supported the business on site as part of their cross-functional team. It worked out very good with them and after a 6 month experiment they look forward what to do next. That the whole bank is under an Agile Transition definitely helped to encourage running such experiments.

Conclusions

What we‘ve seen and heard about Agile@Procurement in these couple of hours was more promising then what we‘ve seen so far in Europe or the States all over!-The Kiwi's might be still be behind in terms of Business Agility, but if it comes to being open minded in procurement we'd wish, that more companies and leaders are behaving like them. Beware the Kiwi's taking over the lead in the movement Lean-Agile Procurement :-)

We‘d like to encourage you to connect to these leaders and exchange about their learnings. Take an examples of a more customer centric procurement and overcome the classic traps. Or as Ross recentely said, at least similar :-): The future is now, what are you waiting for!

Special thanks goes to Andrea Gregory, Head of Procurement Tower Insurance, who connected the dots and brought us over to New Zealand!

One more thing: We learned a lot to and will definitely repeat it as we think it was a win-win for both parties. Also we will have another 2-days certification workshop in Auckland and may be in Melbourne again end of 2019. Stay tuned and check our workshop calendar

Enlarging our Reach via iTunes & Spotiy, thx to AgileAmped!

New York City, March 15 - Mirko, the creator of LAP has got interviewed by AgileAmed, the most famous podcast about agile about Lean-Agile Procurement. Thanks to AgileAmped the reach of our movement got enlarged to their audience and the audience of iTunes and Spotify too!-We’re looking forward to inspire even more people around the world.

AgileAmped has 400+ episodes so far, that have been recording since 2015 and more than 300,000 downloads/listens. They are all available in our podcast library on our website. Not all of the podcasts get released on iTunes/Spotify and other podcast apps, only a highlight episode once per week (so not all 400 are on those platforms). We feel honored to be one of those!

 If you wanna know more about AgileAmped check out their quick 1-min video about the podcast.

Episode 1: Get to Market 400% Faster with Lean-Agile Procurement | Business Agility Series

When it comes to procurement in a Lean-Agile context, according to Mirko Kleiner, “It’s not rocket science” – but it does deliver compelling business value. Kleiner wears many hats: a thought leader in Lean-Agile procurement, author, co-founder of Flowdays and the list goes on. Lean Agile Procurement, he says, has some simple tenants that any agilist would recognize:

• Bring everyone together for alignment from legal to procurement to the supplier and the business users to form a cross-functional team.

• Accept uncertainty.

• Empower the team.

The outcomes include a client with a better understanding of what it wants, less re-work or misunderstanding about requirements, and – get this – an average increase of 400% in time-to-market.

Accenture | SolutionsIQ’s Leslie Morse hosts at the 2019 Business Agility Conference in New York City.

Original Source: Find the podcast also on the AgileAmped website

1st 9 LAP Trainers Certified by LAP Alliance

London, October 11 + 12th - Barclays hosted our first train-the-trainer (TtT) workshop and participated actively in parts of the training. We now have a global footprint of Certified Lean-Agile Procurement Trainers, to overcome the increasing global demand.

Participants from all around the world joined in and wanted to become Certified Lean-Agile Procurement Trainers. They want to teach and conduct Lean-Agile Procurement (short LAP) in their home markets. All of the Trainers see LAP as a 'Game Changer' in procurement / sales and partner management. Lean-Agile Procurement, an approach to make complex sourcing simple, attracted these Agile, Lean and Procurement Experts.

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Source: LAP Alliance. Persons on the photo from left: Mirko Kleiner/flowdays, Avi Schneier/scruminc, Lionel Massiera, Céline Stauder/both goood, Pete Schibli/JumpShift Development, Jessica Larsen/scruminc, Sophie Durand, Damien Thouvenin/both goood, Ivan Dubrovin/Scrumtrek, Philipp Engstler/flowdays, missing on photo: Simon Reindl/Advanced Product Delivery Ltd.

The news of being rewarded with the CIPS Supply Management Awards Europe 2018 for the Best Procurement Consultancy Project, was just a great beginn for the 2 days TtT workshop.

“LAP is the answer to what Agile Procurement should look like! Some companies in Russia already want to pilot LAP.”

— Ivan Dubrovin, Certified LAP Trainer & Agile Coach, scrumtrek

The first 9 candidates for Certified Lean-Agile Procurement Trainers were hand picked and on invitation only. They all are experts in their field and have the same agile mindset and values as we have. It turned out, that this awesome experience in one room lead immediately to new ideas.

We have worked on the following topics:

1. Starting to form the tribe, our vision, mission & values

2. the Lean Procurement Canvas in depth

3. Barclays story + Q&A with Phil Thomas, Managing Director - Head of Global Sourcing at Barclays

4. Lean Procurement Canvas & Lean-Agile Procurement applied

5. Pitching the Award-winning CKW Case to the UK management team of Barclays

6. Sharing Exercises & Cases between the trainers

7. Our operation system@LAP Alliance

8. We create our own LAP1 2-days certification workshop based on the Learning Objectives

Phil is well know in the procurement community for his radical reorganization at Barclays Procurement around commodity (digital self-services) and complexity with Pods (cross-functional teams).

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Source: Barclays & LAP Alliance

He and his UK Management Team gave us insights on how they managed the transformation, their current status and future plans at Barclays (3+5). The neo-Trainers have got a lot of insights from first hands and gave their feedback to the folks from Barclays. Both sides agreed, that the two sessions were very valuable and should be continued in the future.

“It was great to work with like minded people to understand a practical Lean-Agile Procurement approach to this critical function. I came away prepared to lead others through this streamlined thorough process.”

— Simon Reindl, Certified LAP Trainer & Professional Scrum Trainer, Advanced Product Delivery Ltd.

From now on we‘ll drive the movement together forward on a global scale with the help of highly skilled agile and lean experts, that will support their customers achieving twice the value in half the time. The countries covered so far are CH, DE, FR, UK, USA, RU. The trainers represent alliances such as Scrum Alliance, Scrum.Org, SCRUM@Scale, Scrum@Hardware, Lean Six Sigma, SAFe, Management3.0, ICAgile etc.

• Find details about the new Certified Lean-Agile Procurement Trainers here:
  https://www.lean-agile-procurement.com/list-of-trainers/

• Their workshops will be published soon here:
  https://www.lean-agile-procurement.com/workshops-events/

Every trainer acts as an agile coach too and will support their customers in establishing their first pilots with Lean-Agile Procurement in procurement / sales / account management. LAP is not just an approach for procurement only, but adds new capabilities to your agile product teams too. Rather, it is a tool to cope with the increasing complexity and uncertainty associated with strategic partners towards true business agility along the entire value chain.

“Complex sourcing made simple”

— Vision of LAP Alliance

We’ve got a lot of new friends and we’re looking forward to their success stories, but much more to the next retreat in Côte d’Azur, France :-)

Some impressions from the TtT workshop

Media Release: CKW & FLOWDAYS WIN SUPPLY MANAGEMENT AWARD 2018 EUROPE

CKW and flowdays won the most important European award in the procurement industry with the Supply Management Award. The award honors the innovative and agile procurement process for a new intranet from CKW.

In a so-called Pocathon (Proof of Concept and "Thon" by Marathon), the teams and products of three intranet providers were put through their paces for two days. The goal was to implement real CKW application needs.

"On the one hand, we wanted to test whether the products actually meet our expectations, whether the intranet fits in with CKW's IT landscape and whether a legal, commercial partnership agreement could be found," says Andreas Schneider, Head of Supply Chain Management at CKW. "With the approach 'Lean-agile-Procurement', we were able to significantly shorten the time from the idea to the productive start of the new intranet compared to traditional approaches». Specifically, CKW signed a letter of intent with the winner after exactly two days, 1st Quad. Usually, such a procurement process takes weeks. Just six months after the Pocathon, CKW's new intranet was put into operation in mid-October 2018. A further advantage for the project managers of CKW was that they did not get to know the salespeople of the three suppliers, but specifically the implementation team.

Recently, Andreas Schneider, Head of Supply Chain Management of CKW, Yvonne Ruckli, Project Manager of CKW and Mirko Kleiner, Agile Coach of flowdays in Prague, accepted the award.

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Caption: Recently, Andreas Schneider, Head of Supply Chain Management of CKW (2nd from left), Yvonne Ruckli, Project Manager of CKW (3rd from left) and Mirko Kleiner, Agile Coach of flowdays (4th from left) in Prague were honored answer.

DOWNLOADS

Downloads via CKW Website

CONTACT

Business Agility Institute - Agile Contracting & Procurement Symposium

6 great speakers from 3 continents; Dean Leffingwell , Mirko Kleiner, Stewart James, Manjit Singh, Larry Cooper and Allan Kelly shared their experiences, tips and even their templates with you at the Agile Contracting & Procurement Symposium organized by the Business Agility Institute. Find my slides for FREE DOWNLOAD here.

First of all a big thank you to the business agility institute, the organizer of this online symposium!

Recorded online Symposium

Find below the recorded online symposium for re-viewing.

Speakers & Slides

1. Dean Leffingwell

SCALED AGILE, INCSAFE CREATOR AND CHIEF METHODOLOGIST
"Agile Procurement & Contracts "

2. Mirko Kleiner

FLOWDAYSCREATOR LEAN-AGILE PROCUREMENT
"Procurement on Disruption" - Find the Slides & Case Study for FREE DOWNLOAD below.

3. Stewart James

AGILLEXMANAGING DIRECTOR | SOLICITOR
"Why lawyers don’t like Agile"

4. Allan Kelly

ALLAN KELLY ASSOCIATESPRINCIPAL
"Agile Contracts: A Template"

5. Larry Cooper

ADAPTIVEORG COFOUNDER
"It's never just "an IT Project"

6. Manjit Singh

AGILIOUS PRESIDENT
"3 Ways To Restore Government Contracts for Agile Services"

More

More Details about the Symposium on businessagility.institute

Contact

Case Study - CKW Group: Sourcing of a group Intranet Solution in 2 days via Lean-Agile Procurement

Thought leaders like Dr. Jeff Sutherland promotes Agile in his book “Doing twice the work in half of the time“ (1). Wouldn’t it be cool to increase time-to-market in procurement as well?

No wonder agile is currently one of the top three strategic topics in corporate boardrooms. Case studies from all sectors and industries have proven that following agile principles and practices dramatically increases the timeliness and quality of business outcomes...

Find the whole article in "The procurement Magazine" 2018 / 05 (FREE Download)

Author

Shorter & readable Contracts - Disruption or just faster horses?

UK government lawyers have created a shorter, more user-friendly public sector contract to encourage smaller businesses (SMEs) to bid for £12m worth more easily. Is this really a disruption or just faster horses? 

As reported in the supply management news 2 days ago the Government Legal Department (GLD) said Chris Stanley, a lawyer from its commercial law group, spent the past year reducing around 50,000 words of the existing Crown Commercial Service (CCS) contract terms to produce the new slimline public sector contract (20 pages long). Furthermore they

• made the contracts readable, even if you’re no lawyer could understand it
• like to become a benchmark for good business ethics by integrating some new corporate social responsibility obligations. 

A lot of companies stopped bidding in public sector

Motivation of this was to encourage encourage smaller businesses (SMEs) to bid again for £12m worth more easily. From my own experience (compare with the blog post the facts about RfP) I can say, that a lot of companies stopped bidding in public sector as of too much effort/costs through a too complex bid process and contracting.

Is this a useful evolution or don't we need a revolution?

However, looking at this changes by the UK government with an outside perspective it’s looks to me like Henry Ford used to say. 

“If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

— Henry Ford

Don’t get me wrong. They had definitely the right intention and got a really good achievement from a legal point of view. However, I believe if we ask just the lawyers to simplify "there“ part we won’t get the full potential and just get faster horses instead of e.g. a „self-driving car".

The right people have to answer the right questions

For a real disruption we’ve to bring together all stakeholders of the whole value chain (customers, government, procurement, sales, lawyer, etc). Together we have to answer the „real“ questions, such as:

• why do we need a contract at all?
• how could we increase trust even before we’ve started cooperation?
• what can we do to increase time-to-market and so deliver business value to our customers earlier?

While development of lean-agile procurement we’ve asked this questions e.g. "what if we have to decide in one day?“ and together we've found applicable answers.

Learn more under Approach, we’re keen on your feedback.

Author

What could Business learn from Startups?

I'd like to share the slides of my talk from the meet up "Future Friday" at Leiden University, the Hague.

Abstract

In Agile organisations, external partners are often treated as suppliers instead of partners, not recognising the opportunities they could potentially bring to their teams. In faster changing and complex environments, it will become a competitive advantage for companies to have fast access to an ecosystem of trusted partners with matching values and a fast contribution to goals. Join us this Friday as Mirko Kleiner will discuss what businesses could learn from startups in how they work with external suppliers."

Future Fridays

If you want to know more about the Future Fridays at the Center of Innovation, Leiden University check here

Slides on Slideshare

Agile@Procurement - What could Businesses learn from Startups? from waioblue

Impressions

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Author

Slides from my Speech "Success Factor Agile" from Agile Bodensee Conference, Konstanz/Germany

Abstract

Approximately 60-90% of all sales are in the hands of procurement, which is a key success factor for companies. At the moment, digitization is taking place, especially in the area of imple procurement. However, the latest study by the University of St. Gallen shows that there is no recipe for the effective procurement of complex products and services. Does agility offer a solution? - It is about billions and thus nothing less than the survival of suppliers and customers!

If we agile coaches draw an ideal organization, it usually looks like a network organization consisting of agile, autonomous cells. Up to now, our focus in agile transformation has been on the customer and to the internal organization. In the future, agility will cover the entire value stream and thus also the agility of our partners.

As external partners are often closely integrated into the agile organization they became an essential component of the value stream. However, many are still being treated as suppliers with a focus on a price as low as possible, instead of partners on equal terms with additional innovation power. In an ever more rapidly changing, more complex world, it becomes an integral success factor for a company to have quick access to an ecosystem of adaptive partners. Therefor we have to adapt our sales and procurement as well.

KEY TAKE-AWAYS

Please find below the most important key take-aways of the speech:

• the market is changing dramatically. Small vendors could stop production lines of big companies such as VW (27'000 Employees where blocked) and procurement was unable to react in time.
• new developments like e.g. 3D-Printing offer new possibilities to solve complex problems in development and production with fast delivery (Lead times of DAYS to WEEKS), so that it makes no sense to spend months for procurement any more
• for reaching true business agility companies need to create there own adaptive partner ecosystem. This will become a much bigger multiplier for business as today.
• the lean procurement canvas and lean-agile procurement have the potential for a disruption as the business model canvas and lean startup had for business development
• the lean procurement canvas is simple. Find an example in the slides
• The lean procurement canvas is the most LEAN agile contract right after a verbal contract
• there are success stories out there that sourced a new partner in 4 days instead of months, while the people that would work together evaluated each other in an agile approach.

Slides on Slideshare

Succes Factor Agile - In Procurement it's about Billions! from waioblue

Author

3D-Printed Aircraft Engine - Is your Procurement as agile?

This week GE released this great GIF of its 1,300-horsepower advanced turboprop (ATP) engine in which more than one-third of the components have been built through additive manufacturing, or 3D printing. The company is showing off its creation in real life at this week's big air show in Oshkosh, WI. In other words hardware development is getting more and more agile, is your procurement as agile?

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Background

Already in 2016 GE reported the first 3D printed jet engine. They made a simple 3D-printed mini jet engine that roared at 33,000 rotations per minute.

In contrast to traditional machining methods that typically cut parts out of larger pieces to get to a finished shape, additive manufacturing uses lasers to fuse thin layers of metal on top of each other to build parts from the ground up. This advanced technique means less material waste and more complex parts that can be built precisely to optimize how they work inside a machine.

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“This is not a matter of simply replacing one production method with another, but of reinventing the way aviation engines are conceived and designed”

— Giorgio Abrate, engineering lead at Avio Aero, the GE subsidiary that developed the ATP.

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"There are really a lot of benefits to building things through additive,” says Matt Benvie, spokesman for GE Aviation. “You get speed because there’s less need for tooling and you go right from a model or idea to making a part. You can also get geometries that just can’t be made any other way.“

As Joe Justice, creator of Scrum@Hardware, Scrum Inc. recently mentioned: „Thanks to the new technics it’s no problem any more in hardware development to build an engine (working increment) within one iteration!“. One iteration is by definition of scrum less than 4 weeks, modern teams usually use 1-week sprints. 

Conclusions

If hardware development is getting that fast and flexible procurement has to adapt too. It’s predictable, that we will change our partners in a much more adaptive way as we'll do with the production method depending at the current customer needs. In other words we need to close the gab regarding speed (DAYS instead of MONTHS) and become as innovative in sourcing a new partner as the product development is.

Read more about how you could do that with lean-agile procurement

Sources:

http://www.ge.com/reports/reengineering-elevators-transform-21st-century-cities/
http://www.ge.com/reports/treat-avgeeks-inside-look-ges-3d-printed-aircraft-engine/
GE Made a Real 3D-Printed Plane Engine and Here's a Gorgeous Look at It

Does the RfP Process need a MAJOR Upgrade - Episode 3: RfP 3.0 'Request for Participation'

Looking back in the history of the RfI/RfP process we see, that it’s source was developed in another time at the end of the 19th century. Of course the new channels like phone, email, web, etc. allowed new possibilities and increased efficiency. However the core of the process stayed nearly the same. Do we may be need a major upgrade after almost 120 years?

Lets have a look at the RfP 3.0, the request for participation and how this improves competitive advantage of buyers and suppliers.

<< Previous blog post: Does the RfP Process need a major Upgrade? - Episode 2: The Facts

Please note: This blog posts is focusing just on the RfP process. We are aware of the fact that modern procurement is much more than this. We hope you enjoy another perspective!

“Lean-agile procurement reduces and distributes risk through incremental and value-added funding for improved business outcomes.”

— Pete Behrens, Board Member of Scrum Alliance

In previous blog post we’ve learned, that the RfP 2.0  doesn’t work with complex tenders . What we all assumed is underlined with facts. We can’t predict, nor estimate the unknown and so we can’t specify the scope without creating waste. We would need so much time for investigation, that we already could start probing iteratively. Furthermore, we’ve learned to focus to the end user/customer needs, constantly validate those and look for a future-proof partner instead of a predefined solution. If we don’t reinvent RfP 2.0 fundamentally we might loose more and more  potential partners interest and with that we’ll also loose opportunity for unexpected innovations and so a potential competitive advantage.

All this leads us to the conclusion, that we need a major upgrade of the RfP, the RfP 3.0!-An upgrade, that  fosters collaboration and innovation. We call it „Request for Participation“. But how does it look like?

The thing with trust

The fundament of a partnership is trust and transparency. Have you noticed?-We’ve said partnership instead of relationship, that’s the first fine but big change with RfP3.0. In an ideal world we would just choose a partner and  start probing iteratively. Unfortunately, our current culture and believes are not yet there. So we need something in between. The funny thing with trust is, it works in both ways. This often gets forgotten. In other words we need to establish trust and reduce risks for both sides (buyer and partner) at the same time. Therefor we can create sophisticated agile contracts, that describe and handle collaboration, scope, timing, budget, quality, warranty, etc. Personally, I don’t believe in that way and I’m more with Marco Zoppi.

“If the customer is starting to quote from the contract the cooperation has just found it’s end”

— Marco Zoppi  († 2015), CEO youngculture

Sure, we have to manage the basics in a contract, no doubt. But I’m a strong believer in the good idea of men (theory Y, source 1) and we should not punish the majority, because of some few bad theory X cases from the past. By the way, Niels Pflägin said: "There are NO X-er by default, the system / organisation makes them behave like X-er". 

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Source: Douglas McGregor, Theory X/Y

Instead we should find lean and agile cooperation models and -contracts, that are fair and foster trust by e.g. 

• risk share
• bonus / money for nothing, if we achieve the goal/s earlier
• work / fund just stages, with the option of an early exit at any time
• partnering / open books / joint venture
• etc.

So that the partnership stays adaptive instead of fixed.  In my opinion, that’s true agile contracting!-But that’s another story.

Paradigm changes

Currently agile is the only approach we know, to deal with complexity. Its built in approach of build <> measure <> learn brings us iteratively towards the right solution. For the RfP 3.0 this means, that in complex tenders for innovation, business services, ICT, etc. it makes no sense any more to think off solutions (features / functions) or wants in advance. Instead we need to focus on the customer needs and with whom we could solve them best. All this is a creative development, that we only could achieve in a participative approach. The potential partner and all stakeholders from both sides (business, executives, lawyer, buyer, customer / user, developer, etc) need to be involved at once. YES, that means we do this all together in ONE room. This allows both sides to align with the customer needs, but also check if the partner is future proof, if we have a culture-/technical match (soft-/hard skills), etc. Only with this participative, creative development we will create real innovation and get first validations with the stakeholders available. Further advantage of this approach is speed (Time-to-Market). If we get all stakeholders in one room we can immediately decide and achieve results in DAYS instead of Months. We see this from other examples, like e.g. Design Thinking, Hackathons, etc. where time-to-market was improved with such a participative approach dramatically.

Acceptance of uncertainty

But how can we cope with this uncertainty of an „unknown“ solution (scope gets variable)?-Well, there are other disciplines out there, that face a similar challenge. If we think about business development they’ve used to write big business plans and switched over to the business model canvas (a structured page that describes a business model, source 2) and lean startup (an agile approach for early validation of the hypotheses with the customer, source 3). 

The general advantages of a canvas are:

• it’s just one page and we have to focus to what really matters
• it’s a good overview / summary, that makes the essence transparent
• it makes things comparable
• it keeps us aware, that everything is connected and influences each other
• it’s a tool, that fosters collaboration and we could use every day to update our validations with customers /users

Source: Lean Procurement Canvas, Version 1.22 by Mirko Kleiner

What if we use the business model canvas for ideation and overtake the concept for procurement with RfP3.0?-We’ve created the lean procurement Canvas, that has basically 3 areas: 

1. Focus - Strategic themes / goals (WHY we need this partnership)
2. Customer facing - Customer needs, timing, conditions, etc  (WHAT we’d like to solve with this partnership)
3. Partner facing -  Capabilities, USPs, etc. (HOW we’d might solve the customer needs)

After  ideation with the business model canvas it’s very easy to overtake the strategy (WHY) and the customer needs (WHAT) and add the timing (WHEN), the people (WHO) and the conditions (WHERIN) within hours. With this we have the basic informations to start a participative event with one, or multiple potential partners. On this joint event we workout, whatever is valuable for us to decide starting an adaptive partnership. We could work out together more concrete customer needs and appropriate solutions, an agile roadmap of the next stage, etc. Basically we complete together the procurement canvas and decide.

“The lean Procurement Canvas is an agile Contract”

— Ursula Sury, Lawyer lic. iur, Vice Director Lucerne University of Applied Sciences & Arts

Start early, validate often

What counts for a business model and in more details for the customer needs counts also for a partnership. Instead of loosing time in non-valuable work we start as early as possible and constantly validate the joint achievements stage by stage and so the partnership. Therefor the lean procurement canvas becomes the tool for management of your adaptive partner ecosystem.

Conclusion

It turned out, that the lean procurement canvas can be used in all areas and industries, that have to overcome complex tenders, adaptive partnerships, etc. We get increased business value with RfP3.0 (increased time to market, reduced and distributed risk, incremental and value-added funding, improved business outcomes, etc). But for us most important, with the participative approach of RfP3.0 we’ve seen returning fun in the faces of all stakeholders!

Want to know more?

If you’ve got infected by the approach RfP 3.0 ‚Request for Participation‘ feel free to share your opinion and/or similar cases with us. More detailed information about the approach, success stories, the community, upcoming workshops and talks, etc. you’ll find under http://www.lean-agile-procurement.com - Stay tuned!

Author
 

Sources:

1. Idea of men (Theorie x/y) by Douglas McGregor
2. Business model canvas, by Alexander Osterwalder
3. Lean startup, by Eric Ries
4. Title image source: pinimg.com

Does the RfP Process need a major Upgrade? - Episode 2: The Facts

Looking back in the history of the RfI/RfP process we see, that it’s source was developed in another time at the end of the 19th century. Of course the new channels like phone, email, web, etc. allowed new possibilities and increased efficiency. However the core of the process stayed nearly the same. Do we may be need a major upgrade after almost 120 years?

Lets have a look at some interesting facts and experiences  from the field handling complex tenders with the classic RfP process.

<< Previous blog post: Does the RfP Process need a major Upgrade? - Episode 1: The History

Please note: This blog posts is focusing just on the RfP process. We are aware of the fact that modern procurement is much more than this. We hope you enjoy another perspective!

“It’s funny how hiring practices have changed dramatically over the years, but pitching remains comparatively stagnant”

— Avi Dan , Marketeer & Author at Forbes.com

In the previous blog post we’ve learned, that the RfP 1.0 was initially developed at the end of 19th Century and one of it’s main purpose was to overcome the distance between buyer and supplier. Furthermore it worked good for simple until complicated tenders, where experts could exactly define and estimate the scope. In this blog post we wanna focus to complex tenders handled with the RfP 2.0. An example for a complex tender could be the evaluation of a new software product and -provider or a new marketing agency. 

Just 20% of all features shipped are really used by customers

No matter of how we’ve evaluated and/or built a product, or a service it's important to understand, that just 20% of all features shipped are often used by our customers (Source 2). 

Do you e.g. remember this fancy, but useless paper-clip assistant in ms office?-We need to accept, that we are guessing for the useful features during specification and we are again guessing in interpretation of these specs while creating an offer. That means the RfP 2.0 allows no real validation with the end user and creates a distance between buyer and supplier. 

Engineers love the solution, this prevents innovation

In software projects we usually have engineers, that support the tender, on both sides (buyer/supplier). Engineers love engineering solutions and so specs are often describing already the solution (features and functions). In my practice I saw RfPs with hundreds of lines with functional specs. Nobody could tell us any more, who requested what and why. 

“The observer influences the system and the system influences the observer”

— quantum theory

This results in prevention of creativity, so that suppliers just delivered the requested solution.  

KCOM reports in his analyses, that 70% of RFPs for consumer-focused projects forget or didn't require suppliers to explain how the IT project would improve the experience for customers. (Source 3)

Estimation of a complex Problem doesn't work

As a next important thing we have to consider, that we all are extremely bad in absolute estimation of a complex problem (Absolute estimation means the time to resolve a problem in hours). NASA reported, that absolute estimation of a complex problem can vary by 400% in both directions (Source 6). Beside this fact we should accept, that while solving complex problems the scope gets variable, while on the other hand we could fix ressouces/costs, time and quality.

“scope = f(time, quality, ressources)”

— Mirko Kleiner, flowdays, former VP Delivery of a Nearshoring Company

Let me tell you a story about. Once we’ve got an RfI with just 5-10 rough bullets. The buyer asked us for a first guess. We roughly estimated based at our experience and the expected team size/cost per month multiplied by time and got CHF 1.7 Mio. As our engineers went through all the detailed specifications of the RfP 2.0 the total estimation was CHF 1.75 Mio. This happened a lot to us and we got the feeling, that we’ve lost 3 more months again. In this time we couldn’t deliver value towards the customer and may be lost the window of opportunity.

RfP 2.0 is expensive

Going through a complex tender is expensive for buyer and supplier. I know from my own experience, that we’ve invested e.g. in complex e-commerce tenders with a spent volume of several millions 5-6 FTE’s over a period of 2-3 months. This is equal to CHF 150-250k investment for a single pitch, expenses not included.

“Complex tenders e.g. in IT usually takes us 3-6 months and a lot of effort in the procurement as well as in the business”

— CPO of a German private Bank

Talking with several CPOs and procurement organizations we’ve found out, that preparation and execution of a complex tender needs a similar effort at buyer side. The thing is this costs and the even higher costs-of-delay usually  are not calculated in TCO. But this is another story. 

Are we hiring an agency’s past or future? 

Forbes wrote about the RfP2.0 in context of hiring marketing agencies, that it might give a rough idea of an agency’s past accomplishments, and these can inform somewhat of what’s ahead. However, we’re not hiring an agency’s past, we’re hiring its future. And that future is more likely to be a reflection of an agency leadership’s vision, the people it hires, and their willingness to embrace what’s coming rather than preserve what’s been. (Source 4)

“You’re hiring for the future, you’d want to know that they are prepared for it.”

— Avi Dan, Marketeer & Author at Forbes.com

We’d want to know if they have a clear sense of the new consumer, and the technologies and platforms that make listening more important than talking. A forward thinking leadership should have a pretty good point of view about how social media, technology, and the migration away from interruptive messages are changing communications.

About that topic KCM’s report showed, that a fifth (21%) of RFPs were for projects to update restrictive, non-compliant or even failing legacy technology, but only half of these sought innovation from potential suppliers and only 17% requested a future-proof proposition (Source 3).

Do you participate in RfP’s, the agency perspective

From my own experience and the investment a RfP 2.0 needed we’ve rarely chosen where to pitch. In majority of the cases we declined as we didn’t saw chances to win, had no connections to the customer, or any other USP.

“We totally omitted public tenders, that have to follow RfP 2.0 and only looked for the lowest price by law.”

— Mirko Kleiner, flowdays, former VP Delivery of a Nearshoring Company

“Brands are not hiring agencies to create perfect RFP responses that dazzle the brand managers. Rather, brands (should) want to hire an agency that will create unique communications that dazzle audiences. So, judging an agency by its ability to fill out an RFP is testing for the wrong talent. 5)”

— KIRK CHEYFITZ, Chief Content Officer Magazine / Content Marketing Agencies

“We rarely participate in agency-search RFPs. We’re against spec pitches but might respond to a request for information about Velocity. Our process depends on a lot of pretty intensive input. Pitches that ask for our ideas based on very little information are unlikely to generate great work. And they take a lot of time and effort that our current clients are essentially paying for. 5)”

— Doug Kessler, Founder, Velocity Partners

If you’d google RfP you’ll find much more similar statements like this. We believe it’s a pity, that a process prevents us from more innovation and good partnership.

Conclusion

Applying RfP 2.0 for complex tenders doesn’t work. We can’t predict the unknown and so we can’t specify the scope without creating waste. We would need so much time for investigation that we already could start probing iteratively. If we don’t accept this we will loose a lot of time, effort and loose may be the window of oppertiunity. This extra costs we need to balance with the more trust we get and add this costs to our calculations of TCO. In complex tenders we should focus to the end user/customer needs and look for a future-proof partner instead of the solution only. This can only happen if we include all stakeholders like e.g. the end customer, the business and the potential partner and bring them together. If the process fosters collaboration and innovation more suppliers might get interested to participate in competition again.

All this leads us to the conclusion, that we need a major upgrade of the RfP, the RfP 3.0!

In the next Episode

Stay tuned, in the next blog post we present you a summary how the RfP 3.0 -the Request-for-Participation- could look like!

>> Next Blog Post: Does the RfP need a MAJOR Upgrade - Episode 3: RfP 3.0 -the Request-for-Participation

Author

Sources:

1. Title Image source: Cat
2. Standish Group, 2013
3. KCOM, a communications and IT services provider, has carried out a detailed examination of RFPs it received over the past 18 months for strategic IT projects. 
4. Forbes.com
5. 6 New Reasons to Kill the RFP: Find Innovators, Not Commodities
6. Cone of uncertainty, NASA's Software Engineering Lab 1990
7. Image Source paper-clip
8. Huffington Post - is the RfP Dead? 
9. The suppliers perspective