Прегледи на бојни тимови (Blue, Pink...)

A colour team review is a formal stop in a bid schedule. Work is frozen at an agreed maturity, handed to reviewers who did not write it, reviewed against a defined question, and released with recorded actions. The colours are shorthand for which question is being asked. What follows is the most widely used arrangement; it is convention, and you should expect variation.

Blue Team — is the strategy right?

Held before or around the release of the tender documents, while the response can still change shape. Blue Team reviews the output of capture: the buyer's priorities, the competitive picture, the solution you intend to offer, the team or partners you intend to field, and the price position. Nothing is written yet, so the review is of decisions rather than prose.

In the room: the capture or account lead, the solution owner, the person who will sign off on price, and someone senior enough to say the pursuit is not ready. Blue Team is the last cheap place to change the offer.

Pink Team — is the approach right on the page?

Held on the first substantive draft — commonly storyboards or an annotated outline that has been filled in, rather than polished text. Pink Team checks that the response is structured to the buyer's instructions, that every requirement has an owner and a home, that the win themes are actually present in the narrative, and that each section answers the question asked rather than the question the author preferred. Reviewers are looking for the shape of the argument, not typographical errors.

The point of Pink is to catch a wrong approach while rewriting it still costs days rather than nights. Different houses set different numeric completion targets for a Pink draft; the useful test is whether a reader can follow the argument end to end.

Red Team — would this score?

Held on a near-final draft. Red Team reviewers act as the buyer's evaluation panel: they read only what has been written, score it against the published evaluation criteria, and record the score with the justification an evaluator would give.

That is why Red Team depends on the tender's own scoring architecture. In US federal solicitations, FAR 15.204-5(c) requires Section M of the solicitation to "identify all significant factors and any significant subfactors that will be considered in awarding the contract and their relative importance", while Section L holds the instructions for preparing the proposal (FAR 15.204-5(b)). A Red Team that reviews against anything other than the published criteria and weightings is reviewing the wrong document.

In the room: people independent of the bid, ideally including someone with buyer-side or evaluation experience and someone who has never seen your solution. Red Team fails when it is staffed by the authors' colleagues, who unconsciously fill in what the text does not say.

Green Team — is the price right?

A pricing and commercial review, held once the solution is stable enough to cost. Green Team examines the cost build, the assumptions behind it, the risk provisions, the commercial terms being accepted, and the price position against what the evaluation model rewards. It is where price-to-win analysis is confronted with what delivery says the work costs, and where the gap is resolved deliberately rather than by a last-minute discount.

Gold Team — do we sign this?

Final executive review and authority to submit, on the finished document. Gold Team is not a rewrite; it is a decision. The reviewers confirm the price, the commitments being made, the risks being accepted and the exceptions being taken, then authorise submission. Held early enough that a failed upload can still be retried.

White Team — the least standardised

White Team is used inconsistently. In some organisations it is the group that governs the review process itself: it sets the schedule, appoints reviewers, and adjudicates disagreement between review teams. In others it is the neutral team that runs and referees a competitor-simulation exercise. If someone invites you to a White Team, ask which they mean.

Related but not a colour team in the same sense is the Black Hat review, in which your own people role-play each likely competitor and expose where you are genuinely weaker. Black Hat belongs to capture, not to proposal production.

What to do about it

Put the review dates in the schedule before the writing starts, and work backwards from the submission deadline including the rework time after each review — a review with no rework window is theatre. Give reviewers the evaluation criteria and a scoring sheet, not a request for "comments". Insist that findings are recorded as actions with owners and dates, and that the next review checks the previous review's actions were closed. Above all, staff reviews with people who did not write the document; the single most common failure is a Red Team that already knows what the author meant.

How standardised is this, honestly

There is no statute, standard or public government guidance that defines colour team reviews. The scheme descends from commercial proposal methodologies and is codified mainly in paid training and membership material. Two firms can use "Pink Team" to mean drafts of very different maturity. Agree the definitions inside your own organisation and write them down; do not assume a new hire, a partner or a bid consultant shares yours.

Related terms

• Тема за победа
• Матрица за усогласеност
• Цена за победа (Price-to-win, PTW)
• Планирање на освојување
• Одлука за пријавување/непријавување

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