Selected sellers are sellers which have been selected to provide a contracted set of services or products. They are those who have been judged to be in a competitive range based upon the outcome of the proposal or bid evaluation, and who have negotiated a draft contract that will become the actual contract when an award is made.
Final approval of all complex, high-value, high-risk procurements will generally require organizational senior management approval prior to award. Selected Sellers are part of the project management process interactions. It is part of the conduct procurements, a process of obtaining seller responses, selecting a seller and awarding a contract in a project management. Source selection criteria are often included as a part of the procurement documents. Such criteria are developed and used to rate or score seller proposals, and can be objective or subjective.
In a project management, selection criteria can be identified and documented to support an assessment for more complex products, services or results. Past performance of sellers is a part of the selection criteria. During the conduct procurements process, in the project management, the team will receive bids or proposals and will apply previously defined selection criteria to select one or more sellers who are qualified to perform the work and acceptable as a seller.
This term is defined in the 5th edition of the PMBOK.