Can Procurement do Agile?

Some very interesting news out of the USA today, as the GSA (the biggest, baddest procurement agency in the world) has released a Request For Information (RFI) on agile technology delivery.

To shift the software procurement paradigm, GSA’s 18F Team and the Office of Integrated Technology Services (ITS) is collaborating on the establishment of a BPA that will feature vendors who specialize in Agile Delivery Services. The goal of the proposed BPA is to decrease software acquisition cycles to less than four weeks (from solicitation to contract) and expedite the delivery of a minimum viable product (MVP) within three months or less.

In a wonderful “eat your own dogfood” move, the team working on building this new procurement vehicle are themselves adopting agile practices in their own process. Starting small with a pilot, working directly with the vendors who will be trying the new vehicle, etc. If the hidebound old GSA can develop a workable framework for agile procurement, then nobody else has an excuse.

(The reason procurement agencies have found it hard to specify “agile” is that agile by design does not define precise deliverables in advance, so it is damnably hard to fit into a “fixed cost bid” structure. In places where time-and-materials vehicles are already in place, lots of government organizations are already working with vendors in an agile way, but for the kinds of big, boondoggle-prone capital investment projects I write about, the waterfall model still predominates.)