All software projects and software product development goes through a cycle whether in AGILE / WATERFALL / ITERATIVE / HYBRID AGILE / DEVOPS / etc. where requirements are discussed, finalized or atleast finalized at a high level with prospects / customers – internal or external, post which project Statement of Work is created / signed or product backlog is created, agreed and work on software / product development starts.

Presales Consultants OR Solution Architects typically work on below items:

• Responding to Request for Proposals / Request for Information / Request for Quote by building proposals which cater to various sections like compliance, terms and conditions, pricing, milestones, requirements, architecture, etc.
• Finding the fitment of the prospect’s work in terms of organizational / technology / domain / process / quality / etc. with company and providing input for continuing the work of the prospect or not
• Finalize or participate in high level solution and architecture design
• Take decisions or participate in the same for areas like open source vs. proprietary or mixed
• Conduct demos of earlier projects done / products built / solutions
• Build pricing models for the project and milestones
• Estimate or participate in estimation discussions
• Conduct user / customer interviews as a business analyst or tester
• Build proof of concepts / technology or functional demostrators
• Participate in consulting assignments as a facilitator for architects and / or build the high level direction of the assignment or solution
• Participate in or present the solutions / products to clients
• Stay updated with trends in technology / domain, news, happenings in IT industry and overall in the organization which they represent so as to right fit the solution to the customer’s needs based on what’s available and possible
• Build case studies, proposal and estimation repository, create white papers / presentations, processes for responding to client requests, list of standard questionnaires and their answers, etc.
• Understand and study competitors, document the same
• Build or participate in building best practices across technology, domain, process and quality
• Create statement of work, proposals, quotes, approach documents, presentations, minutes of meetings and other artifacts that act as base documents for a sales discussion from back-end sales support side
• Provide inputs to sales, marketing, delivery, testing, finance, HR, etc. and others as required based on the trends and customer knowledge that they acquire from industry / customer interactions
• Hand over signed contracts and statement of works to the software delivery team via a hand over to start development or activities required before that and transfer understanding of customer expectations
• Monitor the project along with project manager at high level for cost, architecture, technology, domain and duration, then participate in testing to ensure that product or project is on right track

Above was Part – 1 on details of what a Presales Consultant or a Solution Architect does. Moving forward I will post more details on the whole Presales and Solutioning life cycle