Digital Acquisition: Market Research and Vendor Communication

1. Digital Acquisition MVPRelease 2 –Classroom SessionAnalyzing What and How You Will Buy October 2016

2. Day 3 Agenda Day 2 – Market Research and Vendor Communication

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

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

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

6. Activity Overview • The Situation 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 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.

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 • Time Take 45 minutes to discuss, analyze, and formulate a briefing to share your findings with the class.

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?

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?

12. Federal Source Cody Policy

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

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.

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

16. Relating to Industry

17. Relating to Industry Facebook 2004

18. Methods to Increase Conversation (Market Research)

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. https://www.challenge.gov/challenge/100000-for-start-a-sud-startup/

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.

21. Guest Speakers

22. Summary & Preview of Tomorrow

23. Day 4 Agenda Day 4 Expectations: Be ready to role play and have some influencing conversations!