Blog · Tag
sme.
10 posts in this archive.
The internal SME review cadence we kept
Weekly 20 minutes beats monthly 90. A year of iterating on our own SME review rhythm, and the cadence that finally stuck.
SME collaboration, the six-month update
Revisiting the September 2025 SME-collaboration series. Which patterns persisted in real teams, which ones had to be rewritten, and the one I was wrong about.
How the draft packet is generated, line by line
The prompt, the retrieval context, and the output template that produce an SME draft packet. A worked example from a real-shaped RFP question to a ready-to-review answer.
SME collaboration, Part 1 of 4: the async interview
Part 1 of 4 on SME collaboration. The async interview pattern: structured prompts, short turnarounds, an audit trail, and no scheduled meeting. Why it works when 'just ping them' doesn't.
The SME draft packet, generated automatically
What we ship to an SME alongside the question so they can answer in five minutes instead of fifty. The packet's components, the retrieval that builds it, and the design choices that keep the SME out of our tool.
SME collaboration is a UI problem
An opinion piece. Why 48% of teams still cite SME wrangling as their #1 problem after five years of vendor promises — and why the answer is not another tool but a better surface for the SME.
In preview: SME-ask tickets with SLA timers
Every SME ask creates a ticket with a deadline derived from the bid date. Open tickets show on the proposal dashboard. Missed SLAs flag, they don't auto-chase. In preview alongside the Proposal Builder section-assignment surface.
The second-question rule for SME asks
A short field-note on how to ask SMEs for input. Ask one concrete question first; save the open-ended one for after you've got the first answer.
The SME Slack bot: architecture and boundaries
How the PursuitAgent SME bot asks for input, what it does with the answer, and what it deliberately refuses to do. A short tour of the boundary between the bot and the human.
Stop CC-ing your SMEs
The 48% SME-bottleneck stat has held steady for five years. Most teams treat it as a people problem. It is a workflow problem. Replace the CC chain with a ticketed ask that has a deadline and a single owner.
See the proposal workflow
Take the 5-minute tour, then start a trial workspace when you're ready to run a real pursuit against your own source material.