Color Team Reviews: A Proposal Scoring Process Checklist
Color team reviews are the quality gates that separate winning proposals from also-rans. Learn the Pink, Red, Gold, and White team framework with actionable checklists for each review stage.
Cabrillo Club
Editorial Team · February 7, 2026

Every winning federal proposal passes through a gauntlet of structured reviews before it reaches the government's evaluation team. These reviews—known collectively as color team reviews—are the quality gates that catch compliance gaps, strengthen discriminators, sharpen pricing, and ensure your proposal tells a coherent, compelling story. Skip them or rush them, and you hand your competitors an advantage they didn't earn.
The color team framework is not bureaucracy for its own sake. Source selection evaluation boards follow a structured scoring process, and color team reviews simulate that process internally before submission. Companies that run disciplined color reviews consistently outperform those that rely on a single management pass before the deadline. The difference is measurable: well-reviewed proposals score higher on technical evaluation, have fewer compliance deficiencies, and produce more competitive pricing.
This article is part of our Winning Federal Contracts guide, which covers the full competitive strategy for government contractors from capture through award.
The Color Team Framework — Pink, Red, Gold, White
While organizations may customize terminology, the industry-standard color team framework consists of four primary reviews, each with a distinct purpose and timing within the proposal lifecycle:
- Pink Team (Storyboard Review): Conducted early in the writing phase. Reviews outlines, storyboards, and initial solution approaches to ensure the proposal strategy is sound before authors invest heavily in draft prose.
- Red Team (Compliance & Scoring Review): The most rigorous review. Evaluates a near-complete draft against RFP requirements and the government's stated evaluation criteria. Reviewers simulate the source selection process and assign scores.
- Gold Team (Executive/Price Review): Senior leadership reviews the final proposal with a focus on pricing strategy, win themes, executive summary, and overall competitiveness. This is the business decision gate.
- White Team (Final Glove Review): The last check before submission. Focuses on formatting, compliance matrix completion, page counts, required certifications, and production-ready quality. No content changes—only mechanical correctness.
Each review builds on the previous one. Skipping a stage or compressing two reviews together typically results in systemic issues that surface too late to fix. The investment in structured reviews pays dividends: fewer late-stage rewrites, better evaluator scores, and a calmer proposal team in the final days before submission.
Pink Team (Storyboard Review)
The Pink Team is your earliest opportunity to course-correct. It typically occurs when the proposal is 25-35% complete—usually after annotated outlines and storyboards are developed but before full narrative drafting begins. Catching a flawed solution approach at this stage costs hours; catching it at Red Team costs days or weeks of rework.
Timing and Inputs
Schedule the Pink Team approximately one-third of the way through your proposal development calendar. Reviewers should receive the following materials 48-72 hours before the review session:
- Annotated outlines for each volume with section-level compliance mapping to the RFP
- Storyboards showing the visual flow of each section—graphics concepts, callout boxes, and key data points
- Win theme statements and discriminators for each evaluation factor
- The compliance matrix mapping every RFP requirement (Section L/M) to a proposal section
- Draft executive summary or a summary of the overall solution approach
What to Evaluate
Pink Team reviewers should focus on strategic and structural issues, not wordsmithing. Key evaluation criteria:
- Compliance coverage: Does the outline address every requirement in Sections L and M? Are there gaps in the compliance matrix?
- Solution soundness: Is the proposed technical approach realistic, feasible, and responsive to the government's stated needs?
- Win theme integration: Are discriminators clearly woven into each section? Can a reviewer identify why the government should choose you?
- Organizational logic: Does the proposal flow logically? Are sections sequenced to build the evaluator's confidence progressively?
Common Pink Team Findings
The most frequently surfaced issues at Pink Team include:
- Missing RFP requirements that have no corresponding proposal section or callout
- Win themes that are generic rather than specific to the opportunity and the customer's mission
- Technical approaches that describe capabilities but fail to explain implementation for this specific contract
- Sections that exceed page limits even in outline form, signaling content that will need painful cuts later
- Graphics concepts that don't support or reinforce the narrative's key messages
Red Team (Compliance & Scoring Review)
Red Team is the most consequential review in the color team process. It evaluates a substantially complete draft—typically 80-90% finished—against the government's own evaluation criteria. The goal is to simulate what the Source Selection Evaluation Board (SSEB) will experience when they read your proposal for the first time. A well-executed Red Team reveals whether your proposal will score Outstanding, Acceptable, or Marginal under each evaluation factor.
Who Should Serve on Red Team
Red Team reviewers should not be the proposal authors. Fresh eyes are essential. The ideal Red Team includes:
- Subject matter experts who understand the technical domain but haven't written the proposal sections
- Former government evaluators or capture professionals who understand how SSEBs score proposals
- Compliance reviewers who will read with the RFP requirements matrix in hand, checking off each item
- A pricing reviewer who can assess whether the technical approach is consistent with the proposed staffing and cost structure
The Red Team Evaluation Process
Give reviewers a minimum of three full business days with the draft. Provide each reviewer with a structured scorecard that mirrors the RFP's evaluation factors and subfactors. The scorecard should include:
- Each evaluation factor and subfactor from Section M, weighted according to the stated evaluation scheme
- Rating categories that match the government's scale (Outstanding, Good, Acceptable, Marginal, Unacceptable—or equivalent)
- Space for strengths, weaknesses, and deficiencies per factor—using the same terminology the SSEB will use
- A compliance checklist verifying every Section L instruction is addressed in the corresponding proposal section
After individual reviews, conduct a debrief session where all reviewers present their findings. This calibration meeting often reveals disagreements that expose genuine ambiguity in the proposal—exactly the kind of ambiguity that will also confuse government evaluators. Document every finding as an action item with an assigned owner and a deadline. Prioritize findings by severity: deficiencies (requirements not met) take precedence over weaknesses (met but poorly), which take precedence over suggestions for improvement.
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