1. Digital Acquisition MVP Release 2 –Classroom Session Analyzing What and How You Will Buy
October 2016
Classroom setup notes:
Write a note on the whiteboard to ensure that participants are sitting in their live digital assignment teams.
Pass out copies of the MAP case study activity and information that participants have seen in the portal. (This may end up being included in the participant packet. If that is the case, then please reference the participant packet when you deliver the MAP case study activities.)

2. Day 2 – Market Research and Vendor Communication
Day 3 Agenda
Day 2 – Market Research and Vendor Communication
Morning
MAP Case Study: Release 2.A Activity Review & Discussion
Beyond the RFI
Lunch (12:15-1:15 pm)
Afternoon
Case Study Recap
Guest Speakers
Facilitator: Glen Phillips
Duration: 10 minutes
Timing: 8:00-8:10 am
Facilitator Notes :
Begin with telling the cohort that today we will dive in to the MAP Case Study. We will spend some time this morning talking through their case study and to look at their results and next steps.
Then explain how, as represented in Release 2B, we will get into a discussion of alternative ways of communicating with potential vendors. This will include a class discussion on Reverse Industry days, challenges, MVPs, and more.
After lunch, we will take what we discussed in the morning and try to re-imagine how we plan to complete market research for the Case Study.
We will then be joined by guest speakers (we need to add content to this once we know who they are and what they will talk about)
Here’s a quick summary of the timing information (facilitator only; no need to share with students unless you think it’s warranted/we will stick to the time schedule):
8:00-8:15 Welcome and Agenda Review
8:15-10:00 MAP Case Study: Release 2.A Activity Review & Discussion
10:00-11:00 Beyond the RFI
11:00-11:15 Break
11:15-12:15 Beyond the RFI in Action
12:15-1:15 Lunch
1:15-2:30 Case Study Recap
2:15-2:30 Break
2:30-4:00 Guest Speakers (USDS/Non-traditional vendor)

3. Release 2 Objectives
In continuing with this release, you should have learned how to:
Ask effective exploratory questions to understand the agency's need and make recommendations on a course of action for a digital acquisition procurement
Analyze a digital service need to determine the most appropriate market for the service
Identify why communicating openly and responsibly with potential vendors is critical to digital services acquisition success and how to do it
Conduct effective market research for digital services
Facilitator: Glen Phillips
Duration: 5 minutes
Timing: 8:10-8:15 am
Facilitator Notes :
Briefly review the core objectives associated with this block of instruction
They achieved these objectives by beginning their stakeholder analysis and taking a survey to assess agency’s readiness for change.
Remember, you have many options fro how you research the market and find out who the potential vendors are, but we will spend some time on this in a bit.

4. Review of Release 2 Key Concepts
Market Research
Understanding the Need/Product Vision
Assessing customers and the landscape to identify the need
Defining the customer need you’re solving (product vision)
Characterized by:
Segmenting the Market
Responsible Communication with Vendors
Understanding What You Are Buying
Conducting Market Research
Potential sources of supply
Segmenting the market
Identifying and communicating with non-traditional suppliers
Facilitator: Glen Phillips
Duration: 5 minutes
Timing: 8:15-8:20 am
Facilitator Notes :
Needs are not the same thing as requirements, so this is a critical distinction to make as you finalize your product vision
Hypothesis and Product Vision
“If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there”
Understanding the need
What will meet the need?: Cloud (XaaS)/ Software (OSS, COTS, Proprietary)/ Design
Trade-offs?
Stakeholders/culture and landscape
Users and other than users
Stakeholder impact on acquiring/developing solutions
Influencing the stakeholders
Overcoming cultural inertia
Driving change and building on success

5. MAP Case Study: Release 2.A Activity Review & Discussion

6. Activity Overview The Situation The Challenge
MAP has a proprietary system/application (COWSS) and a support contract in place with the vendor (NOSE). The system no longer meets the agency’s needs and the NOSE support for upgrades is slow and expensive. Something has to be done to remedy the situation.
The Challenge
Facilitator: Glen Phillips
Duration: 5 minutes
Timing: 8:20-8:25 am
Facilitator Notes :
Review the case study situation and the challenge.
Have them get out their copies and notes
Move to next slide to review the assignment they were to complete before coming to class
As the new CO, you have to work with the stakeholders to procure a mission and cost effective solution. There are many ways to meet the need in the digital services marketplace- what approach should you take?

7. Your Individual Task With your MAP Case Study, we asked you to:
List some sectors of industry and private organizations that might need a similar product or service other than the federal Government. Can you determine what products they use?
Consider the digital services layers and what market segment areas may be applicable to satisfying the agency need. Describe how you think these products and services could satisfy the agency need. What are examples of available products and services that could be used for this system (e.g., Wikipedia, QuickBooks, SalesForce)?
Individually research potential Open Source, Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) and Proprietary solutions and their likely respective impacts (positive and negative) on satisfying the product vision.
Facilitator: Glen Phillips
Duration: 5 minutes
Timing: 8:25-8:30 am
Facilitator Notes :
Briefly review each task. Remind them for task three, they were to research a specific solution:
Members of the WebExers and Pied Piper teams will research Open Source solutions.
Members of the Stone Ponies and Team US teams will research COTS solutions.
Members of the Scrum n’ Roses and Fragile Development teams will research Proprietary solutions.
Move to next slide to launch the in-class team activity

8. Case Study Activity Overview
Work in your teams to prepare a briefing on what you found when researching your team’s market segment.
Structure
Review the case study and discuss your initial results you found individually across the various options: COTS, Open Sources, or Proprietary
Compare as a team and decide if you need additional research to prepare your solicitation
Be prepared to discuss the questions on the following slide
Instructions
Facilitator: Glen Phillips
Duration: 1 hour
Timing: 8:30-9:30 am
Facilitator Notes :
Put them into their teams so we can begin the application activities
They should choose one member to speak for the team when sharing results later on.
There will not be a formal PPT for today, but they will verbally share their results.
We want them to talk about what they found as individuals when they were doing their research on their assigned market segment. Bare in mind, they may have researched other market segments, and if they have time, they could discuss that too in order to have class discussion with eh other teams during their brief out.
The next slide should be what they brief out on as a team.
Lets do a 15 Min Break before the next activity
Take 45 minutes to discuss, analyze, and formulate a briefing to share your findings with the class.
Time

9. Team Brief Out
As a team, what methods did you use to perform your research and what were your results?
What challenges did you have in finding solutions to meet the desired need of the Program?
What additional questions do you have for the program office as a result of your research?
How will you go about gathering that information? Who is the best source for information?
Facilitator: Glen Phillips
Duration: 35 minutes (5 minutes per team, save 5 minutes for wrap up at the end)
Timing: 9:30-10:00 am
Facilitator Notes :
You will have each team pick a speaker to discuss with the class their findings. Make sure you allow other teams to ask questions as they listen and provoke discussion.
The end goal is that they should feel like they have a solid start, but realize that they need to further research other market segments, since they focused on the one we assigned.
Once all teams have briefed, you will want to say, “We are not done with market research yet. As you learned in the last few weeks, there are some alternative ways to talking with vendors to survey the market. So let’s go beyond the RFI…
Go to next slide.

10. Beyond the RFI

11. What we’re going to cover
How do we get the right kind of companies and right people to help address digital services needs?
How do we attract non-traditional vendors who haven’t done business with the government or better engage with those that have?
How do we get to the companies that have what we need?
Why do YOU need to know the market research?
Facilitator: Traci Walker
Duration: 10 minutes
Timing: 10:00-10:10 am (take a break after this block)
Facilitator Notes:
There are two spectrums of Market Research in the government – there is the market research conducted by a program office, usually without the involvement of the procurement team, which only focuses on finding the perceived solutions for the problem they have – it usually does not take into account all the alternatives, and might be limited in scope to what they already “know” or are familiar with. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, but it usually leaves a lot of alternatives on the table.
The other side is a 2 year comprehensive market analysis conducted via its own acquisition or working group – that does do a very in depth analysis and report out – but is costly in terms of administration, resources, and time - when an agency can be using that time to actually prove out a solution instead of building the theory around how well they think a solution will work.

12. Federal Source Cody Policy
Facilitator: Traci Walker
Duration: 10 minutes
Timing: 10:20-10:30 am
Facilitator Notes :
Why do you need to know what to do for Market Research? There are three main reasons:

13. Why do you need to be involved?
As part of the solution team, you need to know what the problem is, how to scope it appropriately, and how does the targeted market negotiate and purchase these kinds of services.
You need to be able to advise your agency program officials on whether they are doing the right sized market research activity
You are the Product Owner of the Acquisition Phase. As you become an expert in digital service acquisition you should be driving the process from the time the need is identified
Facilitator: Traci Walker
Duration: 10 minutes
Timing: 10:30-10:40 am
Facilitator Notes : 1.
2., also, when program conducts market research they are not usually focused on acquisition needs- like small business goals, government vehicles, terms & conditions etc.
3. – so while there are tasks and analysis that other’s do, you can set yourself up to create that trusted environment and executing play

14. Why Should we Talk More?
Build projects around motivated individuals.  Give them the environment and support they need,  and trust them to get the job done.
The most efficient and effective method of  conveying information to and within a development  team is face-to-face conversation.
Facilitator: Traci Walker
Duration: 10 minutes
Timing: 10:40-10:50 am
Facilitator Notes :
Looking at the Principles from the Agile Manifesto – we see that in order to effectively implement it there needs to be a trusted environment
It helps to start that out at the very beginning of the acquisition process to set the tone – that this is going to be different from Day 1 –
This will help you be more flexible through the entire process, focus on getting quality service providers which result in quality delivery of working software
Industry outside of government talks to each other- we take the pendulum to far on what we look at as “fair” treatment

15. How do you talk to this industry?
Agile Marketplace
Hypothesis: Creating an easy to use style of commercialized marketplace, which is vehicle agnostic, complete with the ability to pre-qualify industry practitioners will help standardize the acquisition process for agile services and identify who has the best chance to succeed at delivering product.
Product Vision: Improve the range, speed, competiveness, and quality of contracted digital service solutions by accelerating the way the federal government can rapidly procure agile software development services
Facilitator: Traci Walker
Duration: 10 minutes
Timing: 10:50-11:00
Facilitator Notes :
Ask the Class: What are industry communication trends you have noticed in your work you did in Release 1 and 2?
This industry is not familiar with “Govvie” Speak – so trying to utilize plain language, modern technologies, and different modes of communication helps out

16. Market Research Hub Relating to Industry Vendor Profile Validation
Buying
Facilitator: Traci Walker
Duration: 5 minutes
Timing: 11:00-11:05 am
Facilitator Notes :
Talk to industry by scoping out projects in a way that is familiar to them – use current tools highlight the functionality that you would like to see in your products – this helps the community get a sense of just how big an effort you are looking for and potentially how much it will take to build.
Think of a product that you use regularly and what elements of it do you like or you think would fit the current solution you could possibly want- even if its not ultimately going to be the end product, it can still help industry imagine what is possible.

17. Relating to Industry Facebook 2004 Facilitator: Traci Walker
Duration: 10 minutes
Timing: 11:05-11:15 am
Facilitator Notes :
You can go back in time as well to talk about what the first version of a product was as a place to start= if you are wanting a way to connect agency’s to other agency’s with a social media platform designed specifically for your end users you may not want to jump right to the Facebook functionality of today – but look back to what the site was in 2004.
This is the power of iteration and the power of communication.

18. Methods to Increase Conversation (Market Research)
Reverse Industry Days
Blogs and Social Media
Virtual Industry Day
Similar Industry Experts
Sources Sought tool
Facilitator: Traci Walker
Duration: 15 minutes
Timing: 11:15-11:30
Facilitator Notes :
Introduce the Sources Sought Tool on the TechFar Hub – do a demo of the tool - Have learners work in groups to identify:
Why the fields that are presented in the tool are there (e.g., show vs. tell approach, use of retrospectives) – we could have them walk through a couple of the sections like agile, open source, or user-centered research and design
How they would set up a sources sought strategy for their recommendation in the morning – what fields would be included? Why?
Reverse Industry Day
Blogs and Social Media
Sources Sought tool
Virtual Industry Day
Similar Industry Experts

19. Test an Acquisition Hypothesis
Use Challenges, pilot/prototyping, or Minimum Viable Product acquisitions to determine the full solutions as part of the Market Research Process
Acquisition Hypothesis: NIDA hopes that participation in the contest will enable scientists to test the hypothesis that their research idea can be fostered into a biotech startup, and that eventually any newly created startups will contribute to the pool of innovative small business companies that can successfully compete for NIDA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) funding.
Facilitator: Traci Walker
Duration: 15 minutes
Timing: 11:15-11:30
Facilitator Notes :
Challenges can be used so broadly – for ideation to figure out if there is a solution for a specific problem – such as: How do we increase automated identity proofing for the elderly or poor who don’t have regular or an understanding of utilizing technology?”
Creating a way to test an acquisition hypothesis to find out if there are solutions possible or to build the minimum viable product of a solution and then determine how it needs to be scaled can be a part of this process.

20. Exercise: Choosing an Alternative
Based on our earlier Case Study, get in your teams and you will be assigned one non-traditional way to plan out how to “conduct” the market research. In your team sketch out the actions that would be necessary to implement the strategy. Be prepare to answer the following questions:
What is your target industry?
2. What is your communication strategy?
3. What approvals do you think you would need?
4. What barriers would you anticipate in using this strategy?
5. How do you mitigate them?
6. What does success look like?
Be prepared to report out after lunch.
Facilitator: Glen Philips (Traci Walker support)
Exercise Duration: 1.5 hours
Group work time: 45 minutes; Timing: 11:30-12:15
Lunch Break: 12:15-1:15
Group Report-out/Discussion: 1:15-2:30
Facilitator Notes: We will assign each of the groups one of the methods – so they will each have the ability to talk through something differernt and get different answers.
Teams will report out on how they plan to conduct market research.
I think they should use their whiteboards/easles to document their main points to brief out to the class and then let the class do the Q&A about the process they took – if the class doesn’t have the right kind of questions we can have some planted.
I do think this would be a good place to talk about ASI/ICF’s research and tactics – when we get to hear about what you do we can potentially take an idea from that method.
Then, we will conduct a large group discussion:
What challenges did you have in finding the information that you were seeking?
What do you need to get more information around the market intelligence related to an industry? (e.g., trade shows, non-government technical conferences)
Discussion 1 with group: What Would You Do? – Based on the presentations, how would you move forward and what would you do? What are the next steps needed? (e.g., more research, getting stakeholders onboard)
Discussion 2: Now that they have completed their recommendations on how to move forward, what does sources sought/solicitation communication strategy look like?    

21. Guest Speakers
Facilitator: Traci Walker introduces the non-traditional vendor
Duration: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Timing: 2:30-3:45 pm
Notes:
The non-traditional vendor will discuss what excites them about doing business with the government and how best to communicate with them.

22. Summary & Preview of Tomorrow
Facilitator: Heather Govoni
Duration: 1 minute
Timing: 3:45-3:46 pm
Notes:
Explain that you want to end with a brief wrap-up and reminders about tomorrow.

23. Day 4 Agenda
Day 4
Morning
Review of the Salesforce Market Research Study
Influencing Conversations
LUNCH
Afternoon
Transitioning from Market Research to Discussion of Acquisition Strategy: VA Guest Panel
Facilitator: Heather Govoni
Duration: 14 minutes
Timing: 3:46-3:45 pm
Notes:
Explain that we’ll be reviewing the Salesforce market research study in the morning and looking at how that market research study influenced the acquisition of Salesforce.
Then, we’ll have some guests joining us, and we’ll be practicing our influence skills in some scenarios that you may face as you’re working with various stakeholders.
Then, in the afternoon, we’ll be joined by a guest panel led by an alumni of the program Mark Junda at VA, and we’ll hear about a non-traditional acquisition challenge that they just ran.
If you haven’t done so already, please send your LDA presentation slides to the program address and/or be sure to bring a jump drive with you on Friday.
Any questions/concerns? Feedback about what you liked about today?
Expectations: Be ready to role play and have some influencing conversations!