More than 20 years ago, the small M/WBE/8(a) firm I worked for joined a proposal team with SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation). It was during that effort that I first heard the phrase "frontloading the agony." The phrase was used by SAIC staff to advise team members that we should always start our proposal process by determine everything that would be needed for the effort at the beginning, that the long-lead-time items should be identified and started or ordered immediately, and that short-cuts in the early stages of the proposal or project planning process could be counted on to come back later and bite the team in a most inconvenient place.
Bringing all these large and small process details into focus during the earliest stages of proposal execution minimized the potential for unhappy surprises later in the proposal pursuit and then in the actual project progress. Examples of this might include:
On the staffing side, you don't want to develop an organization chart and start writing a staffing section for your proposal, only to discover that some of the people on the chart are no longer employed (more likely to happen in larger firms with staff in multiple offices), or that the person you want to lead the technical effort will be on vacation the two weeks before the proposal due date. You also don't want to assemble your exemplary projects and write about how they relate specifically to this new pursuit, only to discover that some of those projects have a clause in their contract prohibiting your firm from using that client's project(s) in your marketing efforts. (I have actually had this happen to me on one occasion!)
In addition, you don't want to develop a project schedule for inclusion in your submittal without finding out first whether or not you will need permits, from what jurisdictions, how long such permit acquisitions are likely to take, and whether such a project will require expensive and time-consuming environmental studies. And you don't want to approve the design of a beautiful building entrance and lobby using the highest grade Italian Carrara marble without being able to justify the cost over that of more local supplies, or the amount of time it will take for your order to be processed, executed, and delivered.
The final take-away from this was that a proposal team should not do things in the order of the document's Table of Contents, but should identify those things that would take the most time and get those tasks started right away. For example, lots of work can be done while you are waiting for your permit(s) to be approved. But if you wait until late in the process to apply for such permit(s), your proposal or project effort could suffer unwanted downtime in the final stages, waiting for permits or approvals to arrive.
"Frontloading the agony"—taking care of all those (sometimes annoying) details before they turn into crises or proposal/project killers.