As we discussed all of 6 processes of this knowledge area occur sequentially. It follows traditional waterfall model. By the time of this process you the Project Manager might have completed Procurement & contract planning and might have requested and collected Seller Responses (Quotations/Bids/Proposals). 

Tip: Bids are for– FP; Quotations are for – T&M; Proposals are for – CR; 

The major goal/purpose of this process is Selecting Sellers for your project and making a contract with them. PMI provided several Tools and Techniques to fulfill this requirement.

• Weighing System: Ranking all filtered prospective sellers.
• Independent Estimate: Few companies call this estimation group as Shadow IT. Rough estimate with in your company. 
• Screening System: Weed out Sellers who doesn’t even meet bare minimum criteria
• Seller Rating System: Is an aid to Weighing System. You will provide your own rating system based on your project environment. Seller’s financial stability might be important aspect for a long term Project but that might not be true for a smaller project which will finish in 6 months. So each project has to establish its own rating system.
• Proposal Evaluation techniques: This is also another aid for weighing system. 
• Expert Judgment: You will inherit this quality based on your experience and exposure.

Example of Weighing System:

1. Step1 you will define what all criteria are important for your project.
2. Then you will quantify those criteria by giving a weight, based on a scale 1-5. These weights go in respective colunms
3. By using different evaluation techniques and rating system, you will provide a score to seller and enter those in to appropriate cells.
4. By multiplying score and weight you will arrive sub total for the seller.
5. By adding all sub totals for a particular seller you will get Grand total for that seller.

Finally you will prepare a list of Selected Sellers and Ranks next to them. You have to keep this list as you company asset to use it for next time. But rankings on this list will not stay the same over years. You need to reevaluate all your sellers based on situation and time. The best Seller will not remain the best all the time. They might change their policies or another best seller might emerge. But having a company asset is easy to start.

Contract Management Plan: This is one on PMI’ isms which we all are advocating. You will write a document which will say how you manage this area. What all are your approaches, observations, pitfalls. In the modern era every thing should be documents. Nothing should be kept in the mind. Organizations and Projects precede individuals. Project managers need not be powerful warlords. Organizations should able replace them easily.