dave2025

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.

I am not.

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

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

We also need buy-in and trust from senior leadership. During my active duty time at Ft Hood one of the Director's monikers was Empowerment. But we were never really empowered due to policies on top of policies. See that warrant hanging on the wall, that is all it is....a wall piece. So 100% agree with everything stated thus far, but there also needs to be trust in your workforce in order for it to work.

The business approach for the company who runs the platform is to pay upfront for a perpetual license that they would then build the apps with. So we would be curating software that has not been developed yet, but already paid for.

I applied at that office as it is close to my house, but I thought I read somewhere it was being shutdown due to DOGE. Either way - I wonder if this is for VA disability claims or maybe a combination of VA claims processing and other ancillary concerns.

@formerfed Yhea I tried to wordsmith to flow better. But are you asking if it’s okay to develop non-commercial applications using commercial software licenses/tools? Yes. Award a separate contract to develop applications on a platform we already are paying licenses on since it is a different effort than the scope of the current license. Is the office developing the applications government? No. Contractor would be developing the apps. Or is the office a commercial entity where the application is integrated with the commercial license? IC agency is the customer and the applications would be built off existing platform that we are paying a separate license fee for.

Happy holidays and stay safe. Now why I am truly here - - The office I support requires the procurement of a software capability, specifically Object Management Service (OMS), on an existing platform that we are already paying a license for. The government proposes acquiring an additional software license for the platform to enable the development of new, non-commercial applications. Essentially, this would involve a commercial contract for a software license to support the development of non-commercial/new applications. Make sense? If so, do you know of an avenue? Is this professional, legal, neither, both? Thanks.

I have said this before to folks, "Nobody knows who contracting is, but when they do, it is always our fault."

As stated before I am a consultant supporting the sponsor in the IC community and they use PRISM. I had an account to pull reports and review contracts and from what I can see is that it is a terrible system on par with PD2. This agency is in the works of acquiring a new contract writing system...they want their own versus using what other 3 letter agencies are using. because why? because who really cares about being a good steward of tax payer dollars? i digress.

by PRISM do you mean the contract writing system?

@formerfed I just need to teach myself Jira. challenge accepted. i mean how hard can it be? if i remember -- i will report back with how it is coming along.

Good morning, I am a contractor, per se, but this is more for the government sponsor. We have fancy dashboards for other areas, just not for acquisition. The end state would be to build something in Jira that can pull the required data from our servers to present into a visual (tableau) for the director and Deputy Director in charge of the program. A placemat for each active contract tailored to the complexity and dollar amount.

Thanks @formerfed . Microsoft Project is what we are thinking as well that way we can tailor, as you stated, to meet our needs vs. paying for an expensive license for a product that may be to much for our needs.