This first step in your “Projeto Industrial” course will be, after defining your team, to write your work proposal. You may apply to a maximum of three projects, so you will be writing up to three different proposals.

With this proposal, you are trying to convince the company that owns the project (your Client) that your team is the best choice to execute the project. Having this in mind, here are a few guidelines to help you in your work.

Disclaimer: This is merely a collection of hints and best practices, based on my past experience. It is not, by any means, a guarantee that your proposal will be a winning proposal!

Elements in the proposal

Your proposal is supposed to provide the project owner the following information:

  • Who are you?
  • How do you expect to develop the solution to the problem in the project?
  • Why should the project owner choose you?

Proposal contents

After reading your proposal, the project owner should have a clear view of what do you intend to do. Show that you have made your homework and that you understood correctly the Client’s problem and that you are aware of the possible solutions for the problem (or, at least, of some possible solutions). If the proposal requires an initial phase of searching for possible solutions, provide some evidence that you will know how to conduct such a process (for instance, by giving hints on how would you proceed to find what the possible alternatives are).

Work thoroughly the solution that you propose. In this way, you will make your potential client confident that you have investigated and checked that yours is a viable solution and that the major potential problems and risks have been addressed. No one will hire you if you do not make your potential client confident about your choices.

Proposal form

You are free to choose the format of your team’s proposal. Although you are allowed to use any format of your choice, do not forget that it serves a purpose: to convince your client that you have the best proposal. So, this format should be the one that best evidences the advantages of your proposal.

The way we present ourselves is an indicator of how highly we consider the person we are talking to. As such, the visual contents of your proposal, the layout and its tidiness will influence the reaction of the company to your proposal. Misaligned text, typographic errors, grammar errors, use of jargon, … all these can contribute to a negative view by the reader. Be sure to check (and re-check) your proposal before sending it to your client.