Goal
Create an evidence-based vendor comparison that makes requirements, trade-offs, risk, and unanswered questions visible to the decision maker.
Success Criteria
- Mandatory requirements are separated from scored preferences.
- Weights reflect stated business priorities and total 100%.
- Scores cite supplied evidence and expose missing verification.
- The recommendation explains trade-offs instead of hiding them in a total score.
Inputs
- Business need, scope, and decision deadline
- Candidate vendors and supplied proposals
- Mandatory requirements and evaluation criteria
- Budget, contract term, and implementation constraints
- Security, privacy, legal, support, and integration requirements
- Stakeholders and approval process
Constraints
- Do not guess missing capabilities, prices, contract terms, or compliance status.
- Treat marketing claims as unverified until supported.
- Keep disqualifying requirements outside the weighted score.
- Do not replace security, legal, procurement, or financial review.
Instructions
- Restate the problem, decision, stakeholders, and non-negotiable requirements.
- Define five to eight scored criteria and assign weights totaling 100%.
- Set a consistent scoring scale with evidence standards.
- Score each vendor using only supplied evidence and mark unknowns.
- Compare total cost, implementation effort, dependencies, and material risks.
- Run a sensitivity check on the highest-weight criteria.
- Recommend a next step and the validation still required.
Output
- Decision context
- Mandatory requirement check
- Weighted scorecard
- Cost and implementation comparison
- Risks and unanswered questions
- Recommendation with trade-offs
Quality Check
Recalculate weights and totals, confirm each score has evidence, and check whether one changed assumption would reverse the recommendation.
Stop Rules
Stop short of selecting or contracting a vendor. Escalate security, privacy, legal, and material financial questions to the responsible reviewers.