Tender

As explained in Think Like a CTO

A tender is a formal procurement process in which suppliers are invited to propose a price and approach for specified work.

A tender is a formal procurement process that invites suppliers to quote a price and approach for specified work. It suits defined projects and third-party services, helping organizations compare providers before engagement. section 4.1.4 section 10.2

Evaluate tenders against the whole engagement, not price alone:

• Seek at least three to five bids and investigate unusually large price differences rather than automatically choosing the cheapest offer. section 4.1.4
• Check whether supplier skills match the requirement immediately, using interviews, exercises, or resumes for the people assigned to the work. section 4.1.4 section 10.2
• Assess technical depth, accessibility, response times, communication, scalability, continuity, client references, and relevant affiliations. section 10.2
• Consider price and contract tenure alongside the provider’s ability to deliver and scale with changing needs. section 10.2

Comparing project bids

An organization with a defined project specification invites several onshore companies to tender. It reviews anonymized resumes, tests relevant expertise, checks references, and removes extreme price outliers before selecting a provider. section 4.1.4 section 10.2

Figure 10.2 Evaluating vendors

Use the vendor-evaluation overview to compare the criteria that shape a tender decision. section 10.2

How Think Like a CTO covers it

How deep it goes

Defines solicitation and evaluates bids through price, skills, depth, accessibility, scalability, and references, but does not specify contract drafting.

Examples

Uses onshore project bids, anonymized team resumes, vendor exercises, client references, and support-coverage questions.

What it assumes

Assumes a defined project specification or service requirements, an outline service agreement, and SLA requirements.

What you can do after

Evaluate vendors by comparing capability, resilience, service fit, references, price, and scalability.

How it connects

Connects procurement with outsourcing, service agreements, SLAs, vendor evaluation, and contract management.

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Related concepts

• supplieruses · A supplier is a person or organization that provides goods, products, services, or other resources to another party.
• specificationuses · A specification is a formal or informal description of the required or intended behavior, properties, interfaces, or constraints of a system or component.

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Think Like a CTO. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.