Performance Agile ^SM is a holistic and structured approach to meet the challenges of the new procurement methods. Government procurements for software-related acquisitions are moving, and in some cases have moved, to technically oriented competitions. The more traditional approach is heavy on documentation where the vendor writes large technical and management approach volumes describing what they plan on doing and trying to show they will be successful using these approaches. The emphasis has shifted from solely writing documents to demonstrating corporate and team capabilities in a variety of formats including oral presentations and interviews, code challenges to solve problems over a short period of time (e.g., 10 days), and/or technical demonstrations where the vendor’s team has a 6-8 hour period to develop a solution or update code. This technical focus requires a different approach to competitive proposals while still incorporating the fundamentals of business development and capture processes.

Performance Agile ^SM (PA) helps companies get started in competing in this new approach by looking at the complete process through the lens of business development and project management.  Once the groundwork is set, PA provides the technical team the basis to begin their preparation activities and practice sessions with a set of defined roles, time-boxed schedules, detailed activity lists, and presentation outlines along with selected Agile practices and techniques to show off the company’s abilities and knowledge. These initial materials are then modified and updated to address the specific requirements of the targeted Request for Proposal (RFP) and associated technologies (ML/AL, data warehouses, etc.).  Now the team moves into practice sessions using custom problem statements to exercise the processes and simulate the types of challenges based on the RFP and Performance Work Statement (PWS). The focus is to accelerate the technical team-building process in order to maximize the potential for success and then deliver a winning set of solutions.

There is more required to competing for these procurements than just passing off the RFP to the technical staff and asking them to go get ready (or go do it NOW). For those new to these technical procurements or just getting started, the issue is where to begin while optimizing the investment dollars. The same concepts are also useful to those already competing to improve their processes and consider additional options to improve their P-Win.  PA helps companies, and their technical teams, confidently perform under the pressure and constraints of this competitive environment.

See the About page for more information on my approach to implementing PA.