Afternoon,

I’m assisting with the drafting an RFP for software development and sustainment. I am wondering of a novel approach to implement "T-Shirt sizing" into the RFP so vendors can bid accurately, and we can manage the contract effectively post-award.

Specifically, how do you handle:

1. The Dev/Sustainment Split: Do you buy a fixed capacity (e.g., 3 Scrum teams) and use T-shirt sizing to budget how much of the roadmap they can deliver, or do you purchase "T-shirt points" on-demand?

2. Sustainment Guardrails: How do you prevent sustainment (urgent bugs, security patches) from eating up the capacity meant for T-shirt-sized feature development?

3. Sizing Calibration: How do you handle "sizing drift" post-award? (e.g., if a vendor bids a low price for a "Medium" but post-award claims every standard feature is a "Large" or "XL"?).

I would love to hear how you've successfully structured these RFPs, what pricing models worked, and any specific language or evaluation strategies you recommend. Thank you.

I don’t think you’re going to find much here in the way of pertinent information. My suggestion is identify companies that are industry leaders. Ask them what are the best practices and process. Also ask for success story’s from both industry and government. Make personal contacts and obtain samples and examples along with lessons learned. The government has tons of experience in this area starting a couple decades ago with Agile. Check with the US Digital Service for their advice https://techfarhub.usds.gov/. Lots of case studies exist if you search on this.

Or you can prepare a high level statement of requirements including questions as you indicate above, prepare a Request for Information, post a notice of the RFI availability in SAM.gov, and perhaps set up meetings to discuss promising ideas.

@dave2025 What books and articles have you read about the use of T-shirt sizing in Agile project or supply chain management? That's what you're asking about, right?

18 minutes ago, dave2025 said:

1. The Dev/Sustainment Split: Do you buy a fixed capacity (e.g., 3 Scrum teams) and use T-shirt sizing to budget how much of the roadmap they can deliver, or do you purchase "T-shirt points" on-demand?

2. Sustainment Guardrails: How do you prevent sustainment (urgent bugs, security patches) from eating up the capacity meant for T-shirt-sized feature development?

3. Sizing Calibration: How do you handle "sizing drift" post-award? (e.g., if a vendor bids a low price for a "Medium" but post-award claims every standard feature is a "Large" or "XL"?).

1. Fixed capacity. Teams x Sprints. We don't use sizing pre-award because (speaking for myself) its too difficult to define unless there is a history with the awardee to use as baseline. This is important for CO to understand. On the other hand, the contractor needs to know what - and how much - you want them to do. This specific issue is a good reason to not use LPTA or award without discussions.

   
   2. Sustainment vs development (Devops, OM vs DME, etc.). That is extremely important and should be in the contract scope - who is responsible for what. We use a sort-of devops model and one team does both sustainment and development. We have a release backlog and sprint backlog. A release typically has 3-5 sprints. Stories and epics with points. The biz owner and PM (me) approve both. At these two decision points we decide how much effort goes to sustainment vs. development. Most releases and sprints get a bit of both, but the ratio varies a lot.

   If sustainment and development (OM vs DME) are performed via two teams or different contracts - determining what is what this becomes much higher stakes and avoid this if you can.

   3. No good answer. This comes up all the time.

Finally, there are so many guides to this stuff. Use them. Find one you like, follow it, tell the contractors and offerors to follow it, and that will help everyone have a common framework and understanding.

Are you familiar with function points? https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/software-engineering/software-engineering-functional-point-fp-analysis/

3 hours ago, General.Zhukov said:

Finally, there are so many guides to this stuff. Use them. Find one you like, follow it, tell the contractors and offerors to follow it, and that will help everyone have a common framework and understanding.

Good advice. The best guidance is back up, conduct market research as I suggested earlier, and avoid the “flavor of the month” selection. Make an informed decision on a strategy based upon your agency specific needs, capabilities of your technical staff to understand and possesses training on the approach as well as the ability to successfully monitor/implement it. With this background, select a contractor best matching your needs and offers the greatest chance to deliver your required outcomes. .

Unfortunately so many agencies failed with development for lack of understanding and training, not being fully prepared to implement, and contractor selection based upon the wrong needs.

16 hours ago, Vern Edwards said:

@dave2025 What books and articles have you read about the use of T-shirt sizing in Agile project or supply chain management? That's what you're asking about, right?

Have not read any books, perhaps I should and yes..Agile world.

Edited June 17Jun 17 by dave2025

15 hours ago, Don Mansfield said:

Are you familiar with function points? https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/software-engineering/software-engineering-functional-point-fp-analysis/

I am not.

16 hours ago, formerfed said:

I don’t think you’re going to find much here in the way of pertinent information. My suggestion is identify companies that are industry leaders. Ask them what are the best practices and process. Also ask for success story’s from both industry and government. Make personal contacts and obtain samples and examples along with lessons learned. The government has tons of experience in this area starting a couple decades ago with Agile. Check with the US Digital Service for their advice https://techfarhub.usds.gov/. Lots of case studies exist if you search on this.

Or you can prepare a high level statement of requirements including questions as you indicate above, prepare a Request for Information, post a notice of the RFI availability in SAM.gov, and perhaps set up meetings to discuss promising ideas.

We submitted an RFI already for this requirement and do not have the appetite nor time to submit another to industry. The team is familiar with Agile (story points, epics, sprints, etc...), I, as a consultant, are just trying to see what is out there in order to contribute to the t-shirt sizing conversation. I work in the IC community.

3 hours ago, dave2025 said:

I am not.

Wouldn't that solve your problem?

@dave2025

I’m assisting with the drafting an RFP for software development and sustainment. I am wondering of a novel approach to implement "T-Shirt sizing" into the RFP so vendors can bid accurately, and we can manage the contract effectively post-award.

See this:

https://asana.com/resources/t-shirt-sizing