The Importance of Red Team Reviews

The job of a Red Team review is to assess the completeness of a proposal, assuring that the proposal is compliant, comprehensive, and compelling. After months of working on a proposal and being so deeply involved in every detail, it can be hard for the team to see the inconsistencies, edit their own writing, and ensure that the proposal clearly and fully addresses all the requirements of the solicitation. A Red Team review offers the proposal team a fresh perspective. That is why Red Team reviews are so valuable.

Red Team reviewers should be looking to see if the proposal tells a clear, convincing story. Because of that, a Red Team review is most useful when it takes place in the final stages of proposal development – the proposal should be near ready for submission – but offer enough time afterwards for the proposal team to make adjustments and address any gaps, inconsistencies, or clarity issues identified by the Red Team. 

Because the Red Team looks at things like coherence, consistency, and RFP compliance, the more complete the proposal package sent to the Red Team the better. A complete or nearly complete project description is, for most teams, the most important thing to send the Red Team. However, it is also helpful to send the team’s biosketches so that reviewers can get a clear picture of the team, just like agency reviewers will. It is also not a bad idea to send other ancillary documents that the team would like to get feedback on. For instance, if your team is not well versed in writing management plans or evaluation plans, or just wants feedback on those components, those would also be good to have reviewed by the Red Team. 

Red Team participants should be independent of the proposal team yet knowledgeable about some aspect of the research being proposed, as well as knowledgeable about proposal development and writing a successful proposal, similar to actual proposal reviewers. Having this kind of well-rounded Red Team is the key to getting quality, helpful feedback on a proposal draft.

The goal of a Red Team review is to help ensure that a proposal will receive positive reviews and a high evaluation score. However, reviewers can only give valuable feedback when they have documents that are ready for feedback. If reviewers are commenting on a very rough draft, then their feedback is likely to be less valuable than if they are able to comment on a draft that has been through (nearly) the entire proposal development process. This means that proposal development timelines, especially in the time of Covid-19, need to be adjusted to allow for a few weeks at the end to add in this important step in the process. 

In this time of Covid-19, a Red Team review may be helpful more now than ever. With everyone working remotely and apart, proposals are being written in pieces in Google documents over the internet. Although this method of proposal development is necessary for the time being, it can also lead to gaps and inconsistencies in what ends up on the pages of the proposal. Having some impartial and fresh sets of eyes is so necessary right now. Guiding reviewer feedback with a copy of the solicitation requirements and review criteria for the particular opportunity being applied for is typical, but it is also a good idea to pose questions to your Red Team if you have any. Things like asking them to suggest cuts if you are over the page limit could be helpful. It may also be helpful to ask if your grand challenge is clear or if your metrics are coming across. Or, if you have other solution-specific questions your team is having trouble with, now is the time to ask – having a group of unbiased people to weigh in can be extremely valuable to the end product.