ADAPT on Agile Breakfast Briefing

ADAPT on Agile Breakfast Briefing - Lowering Contracting Barriers to Agile Methods in Government

Join these interactive discussions with community peers from Government, Industry and Academia and be ready with your contracting and how-to questions such as:

• When is it best to do a single award or multi award IDIQ or BPA?
• When is it best to use fixed price over cost-reimbursement or T&M?
• How best to word a performance work statement (PWS) to describe mission outcome versus HOW work is to be performed?
• How to contractually commit customer to ensure Product Owner time is committed appropriately?  
• How to contractually commit contractor for performance?
• How to report progress (oversight)? 
• How and if to do earned value?
• When is it best to parse out into a separate contract Continuous Integration, etc.? 

Purpose

The use of agile methods across Government has been growing, and with it the understanding that contracts written for an agile, or incremental, development effort must of necessity be different than those written for more traditional efforts.  The revision being drafted for DoDI 5000.02 specifically addresses incremental development, DoD's term for iterative agile methods.  Contracts that allow agile, or iterative, development of software require some special considerations on the part of contracting officials.  The iterative process in many ways does not match the traditional approach to Performance Work statements, Data Item Descriptions, Program Reviews, or Contract Deliverable Requirements Lists 

The purpose of this workshop is to examine with two key DoD officials some best practices in writing and managing contracts for agile development (CDRLs for example).   Areas of program oversight, product ownership, requirements prioritization (must have, should have, could have), technical debt, cost control and affordability, and EVMS may also be touched on as they relate to the contract that invokes agile methods.

Attendees will take away information that they can apply directly to their organization, and will have the opportunity to influence how policy and standards get shaped for Agile in Defense.