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Traditional, Non-Traditional, & Transitional

Writer's picture: Jonathan MostowskiJonathan Mostowski
A vibrant peacock butterfly with striking red, black, and blue eye spots delicately rests on a soft white flower against a monochrome background.
A vibrant peacock butterfly with striking red, black, and blue eye spots delicately rests on a soft white flower against a monochrome background.

When acquiring agile development services, I see three categories of vendors. Understanding the perspective of these vendors can provide insight into how an agency ought to interact with them and the extent to which their concerns should be prioritized.


  • The Traditional: Vendors that have been created over some significant period, optimized for the way the government has always bought technology.

  • The Non-Traditional: Vendors new to the government that bring the best of modern tech and methods but are prone to gaffs as a result of their unfamiliarity with the government bureaucracy.

  • The Transitional: Vendors comprised of either of the two above but who are making a concerted effort to adapt to the new environment.


“The Traditional”


Often demonized, the Traditional vendor represents all of the things that the Agile enthusiast would like to point to as what is wrong with the system. But The Traditional company is merely a reflection of “ourselves” they are exactly what the government has demanded for the past 50 years. They have invested significant resources to create the structures required of them (e.g., EVMS) and they have received beatings when multi-billion dollar programs have failed. It is not surprising they push back on the lack of details in requirements or changing the proposal process from “tell to show.” They have robust proposal teams designed around the complex and laborious proposal process. They have built staffing pipelines to manage the government’s ever-changing needs and requirements, so it should not come as a surprise when they balk at short periods of performance and small MVP-focused projects.


The question then, should the government entertain the cries of Frankenstein’s monster? From my perspective, they have experience, and for that, we would be wise to listen to their concerns, but we should not abandon modernization for their sake, industry will always adapt. There is also an element of reality here. As fast as the government is changing, it will likely never make a full transition to Agile and Agile will likely be replaced by something else long before it ever gets close.


Traditional vendors know this, and they also know that the major acquisitions of significant dollars will likely remain as traditional contracts; their incentive to change is largely devalued. These vendors have watched the pendulum swing many times and are in large part biding their time. While this may sound dark, it is not. It is necessary to understand one’s environment if there is any hope to change it, and change is certainly happening. While there will always be this reality, there is also a reality where the culture around acquisitions and technology changes; every program that is modernized and every acquisition that is optimized will save significant money and add tremendous value to users across the country. Change is not measured in statistics it is measured in the delivery of value.


“The Non-Traditional”


The Non-Traditional company is the cool niche company that is probably based anywhere but the Beltway and has a proven record of delivering good tech in the private sector, if only we could get them to do that for the government we would be fast and nimble, and cool too. But the reality is that the Government is different than the private sector. The government is difficult to work with, pays a relatively low ROI, has numerous requirements that may seem threatening to a private company, and takes incredibly long to make decisions.


Congress and Government thought leaders have developed numerous opportunities, authorities, and strategies to mitigate many of these problems, but culturally the government operates from a position of “Risk Mitigation” and the private sector operates from a “Risk Optimization” perspective and that difference will never be resolved by new laws or regulations, only through small victories and demonstrated success. This hazardous environment creates numerous challenges and opportunities for vendors to make mistakes or take bad deals. The questions and concerns here are legitimate and often help the government see its biggest flaws as only an outside perspective can.


To bring new companies into the marketplace is a noble cause and while it adds tremendous value, it is not the answer for everything. While the risk for these vendors is high, having a reliable fixed revenue stream at the scale the government spends is often too enticing for these companies to ignore.


“The Transitional”


The Transitional company is one of the two aforementioned and has either “read the tea leaves” or learned from its mistakes and made the decision to adapt its operating model to address the issues above. This looks very different between the two, but at the core of it, is an understanding that “the way we have always done it” is not going to cut it. Just as the government needs an outside perspective so too do these companies. There are investments and retooling required to address the intended nimbleness of the new acquisitions and delivery models and the rigidity of bureaucracy which will always remain.


This group offers the most hope and there really isn’t enough engagement the government can do with them, all of the lessons around user-centered design should be applied here. To this day I credit most of my success to the three months I spent, in 2010, interviewing vendors and asking how they would do things differently.


In this uncharted world of government transition, understanding who is walking before you, behind you, and besides you can make all of the difference.


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