George Mason University is developing a playbook to help government work with innovative industry partners. After more than 70 interviews with expert practitioners, the Center for Government Contracting has refined its acquisition hypotheses into a draft set of “plays.” Over the next several weeks, we will test-drive these plays with the acquisition community to gather feedback and make improvements. We want your feedback!

 

Read the draft playbook. 

Send your feedback to elofgren@gmu.edu

Background

In January 2021, the Center for Government Contracting announced a year-long study into improving the way government and commercial companies work together. [Link] Acquisition reform as been a hardy perennial for the past 50 years, but the past five years in particular have seen important changes and increased flexibilities. Major constraints are found in implementation and culture. The study seeks to uncover practices that have proved successful on the ground and expand their adoption within the acquisition community.

“It’s really about taking the tools that have been developed, in law and regulation and then policy, and helping the system move forward, because a lot of this is about changing culture,” executive director Jerry McGinn said in an interview with the Army’s AL&T magazine. [Link]

A Paradigm Shift

The Center’s team started out with the framework of how a broad economic shift from the industrial age to the digital age necessitates a shift in acquisition practices. The industrial era was marked by mass production of hardware where most of the cost was in routine labor, raw materials, and tangible assets. Even for “information” goods like a newspaper, most of the cost was in the paper, distribution system, and printing equipment.

Slowly, sources of value in the economy have changed. Software, data, product design, and other intangibles can be reproduced with nearly zero marginal costs. Companies tapping into these sources of value must leverage knowledge labor, digital services, and non-routine processes. The differences between industrial age and digital age are summarized in Figure 1 below.

Center researchers used the framework to create hypotheses about major elements of the acquisition process.

The first hypothesis, for example, is that program requirements need iteration rather than stability. In the industrial age where most of the cost was in reproduction of a known item, it made sense to lock down a list of product features and measure progress back to it. There was less uncertainty overall.

However, in the digital age, knowledge work is the most important input. Development teams must be empowered to turn general statements of mission outcomes into product features. In other words, tell them “what” needs to be done rather than “how” it must be done. These requirements should be partitioned and iterated within a roadmap.

The Center developed nine hypotheses summarized in Figure 2 below. You can find explanations of each hypothesis in our study read-ahead. [Link] Watch a short video introducing the study approach on YouTube. [Link]

Testing Our Hypotheses

The Center used the hypotheses to structure interviews with acquisition practitioners. Each hypothesis was given a short explanation in a read-ahead provided to each participant ahead of the interview.

We then asked the participants for critical feedback on each hypothesis. In particular, we wanted them to translate the principles represented by the hypotheses into specific approaches used in real acquisition programs. The approaches that worked on the ground would then form the foundation of the Center’s playbook.

Over a three-month period between February and May, the Center interviewed more than 70 individuals with well over 1,000 years of acquisition experience. About half of the folks were in program management and contracting, and the remainder were a blend of various other functional areas.

Over 2,000 notes were taken, of which 77% were classified viewpoints by Center researchers, 14% were actionable advice, and 9% were references to specific program implementation. These comments were distilled into a set of six draft “plays” delineated into three program-level plays and three software-intensive plays. The draft plays are summarized in Figure 3 below.

We Want You!

We believe these draft plays have the potential to add to the conversation but are by no means perfect. That’s why we didn’t want to spend a lot of time perfecting the wording and implementation details until we get feedback from the acquisition community. We expect plays may be changed, dropped, or added as a result.

Over the next several weeks, we will be test-driving the draft plays with a series of blog posts getting into the gritty detail of the opportunities and challenges. We want to make this a transparent process of testing and updating ideas.

Do you think one or more of the draft plays is wrong? Missing context? Needs additional detail? Give us a shout! We invite you to help improve our playbook!

You can schedule a short Zoom call or provide written feedback to Senior Fellow Eric Lofgren at his email address, elofgren@gmu.edu. We welcome your ideas and engagement!

Have an idea for your own play? Use the PowerPoint template to write it out and submit it to us! We have a few other plays in various stages that may be added or replaced over time. This is a living document, and will be more powerful for the community the more people contribute. We hope you will contribute your expertise!

Read the draft playbook.