Creating a new model for procuring software development services
Summary
Before founding Skylight, Chris Cairns and Robert Read designed and launched the Agile Delivery Services Marketplace — a new model for procuring software development services that replaced traditional written proposals with working prototypes. Built as a Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) under the General Services Administration’s (GSA’s) IT Schedule 70, the marketplace gave agencies a pre-vetted pool of vendors who had proven they could deliver, not just describe it. The model was widely recognized and adopted by agencies and programs across government.
The challenge
In the wake of the Healthcare.gov launch failure, federal agencies increasingly recognized that agile delivery was the path forward for software. But recognizing the need and acting on it were two different things — existing procurement processes made it nearly impossible to identify vendors who could actually do the work.
The fundamental problem was how vendors were evaluated. Traditional procurement relied on written proposals — documents that rewarded strong writing and incumbency over real delivery capability. A vendor could describe agile practices fluently without ever having shipped working software using them. Agencies had no reliable way to tell the difference.
The resulting risks compounded. Vendor lock-in limited agencies’ ability to course-correct. Procurement timelines stretched for months or years. And when contracts were finally awarded, agencies often discovered too late that their vendor couldn’t deliver. What was needed wasn’t a better way to evaluate proposals — it was a way to evaluate actual work.
The solution
Chris and Robert designed the marketplace around a single principle: make vendors prove they can do the work before they get the contract. Instead of submitting written proposals, vendors built working software using openFDA as the data source — giving evaluators direct evidence of each vendor’s design, development, and delivery capability. This “show, don’t tell” approach made it possible to distinguish between vendors who understood agile and those who could actually execute it.
The challenge also exposed how procurement rules had been playing into the vendor lock-in problem. A public-domain contracting clause ensured that all deliverables — code, data, and documentation — remained government-owned. This meant agencies could switch vendors or bring work in-house without losing access to what had already been built — a deliberate structural safeguard against the lock-in dynamics the challenge section describes.
Making a better evaluation method wasn’t enough if agencies couldn’t actually use it. The marketplace combined the BPA under GSA’s IT Schedule 70 with ready-to-use solicitation templates, performance work statements, and oral evaluation guides — giving agencies everything they needed to run a procurement in weeks rather than months. The contracting infrastructure turned a promising approach into something any agency could adopt without reinventing it from scratch.
The results
- More than 700 participants attracted to industry outreach events and more than 200 prototype-based submissions received via public GitHub repositories
- All submissions evaluated within weeks using a three-person team and contracts awarded to 17 vendors
- Eight formal protests successfully defended through the evaluation approach
- Recognized by industry, Congress, and the Office of Management and Budget as a model for procuring software development services
- Multiple federal, state, and local agencies influenced to adopt similar approaches
- Nearly a dozen agencies enabled to achieve improved software delivery outcomes through better vendor selection