The California Department of Technology announced this month that seven new vendors had been added to the Pre-Qualified Vendor Pool, bringing to 30 the number of firms having that credential in seeking state IT contracts. Techwire queried some of those firms, as well as one that's already been in the pool, to find out what the qualification process was like, whether it was tougher to qualify than they had anticipated, and how they expect it to help their firms.
Today, we have responses from OnCore Consulting, QualApps, xFusion and Infiniti Consulting Group.
ERIC STEEN, MANAGING DIRECTOR, QUALAPPS
If you haven’t applied or qualified for PQVP before, what changed that persuaded you to seek qualification?
We applied when the first opportunity arose, but didn’t dedicate the time and effort to provide a worthy response. Consequently we missed out on opportunities to engage on projects where we could have contributed. This time, we invested in building a nice application and demonstrating that our firm is committed to agile development.
Please briefly describe your experience with the pre-qualification process. Was it easier than expected, harder than expected, or about the same as what you expected?
The effort wasn’t particularly difficult, but it did require dedication and focus. Since most QualApps employees are committed to customer engagements, a successful submission required working after hours and weekends. All-in-all, the process was fun, and a few of our employees who hadn’t worked together previously got the opportunity to collaborate on something interesting. Seeing the team come together to deliver a quality product was rewarding.
What does the pre-qualification acceptance mean to your company? Obviously the intent is to win more contracts and thus revenue. Has it opened other doors? Added extra workload to your team? Have you added personnel as a result?
We hope that being part of the PQVP communicates to existing and potential customers that QualApps has the expertise needed to help them be successful. Hopefully being part of this pool opens doors and allows us to do more of what we love — building solutions that add value.
For a company considering applying for pre-qualification, what cautions would you give? Generally, any advice?
The state is looking for partners that are agile practitioners and dedicated to cutting-edge technologies. This pool is a way for companies to differentiate themselves, to set themselves apart as agile solution providers.
What other takeaways have you experienced since being added to the pre-qualification list? Was this something you and your team celebrated?
Since we were notified on June 8, there hasn’t been much time for celebration. That said, the team is excited about the award and about the prospect of doing more for California.
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JOY MUKHERJEE, VICE PRESIDENT, XFUSION
If you haven’t applied or qualified for PQVP before, what changed that persuaded you to seek qualification?
xFusion was always interested to get into the ADPQ, currently known as PQVP pool, but we as a firm were not selected the in the first go-round even though we feel we had a strong submission. We purposely stayed away from the second go-round, but when we saw where the state is going with agile projects, we did not want to stay away, so we came back strongly.
Please briefly describe your experience with the pre-qualification process. Was it easier than expected, harder than expected, or about the same as what you expected?
The problem was a little difficult this time. The state asked many things that were not there the first two times. However, xFusion has established the culture, solution and expertise to “Deliver Rapid Agile Values (RAV) to the Customers” that helped us to quickly implement and deliver the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and submit a winning proposal.
What does the pre-qualification acceptance mean to your company? Obviously the intent is to win more contracts and thus revenue. Has it opened other doors? Added extra workload to your team? Have you added personnel as a result?
We (were) not able to bid as a prime vendor and always depended on other firms who are in the PQVP. Going forward, we will be bringing our agile solution capabilities to various departments in the state of California. As mentioned, xFusion’s framework for “Agile Digital Transformation," xAGILITY 360, allows Agile Planning, Agile Building, and Agile Operations of Digital Services with the key objective of “Delivering Rapid Agile Values (RAV) to the Customers." Our culture of innovation, technology and agile transformation has established a seasoned in-house team who can lead, manage and deliver large-scale agile digital transformation projects.
For a company considering applying for pre-qualification, what cautions would you give? Generally, any advice?
There is no such caution, but will like to say to establish good understanding on the principles, techniques and standards for Agile Digital Transformation before starting the project for PQVP. Please note that it’s not a final product that CDT is expecting; it’s a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). What matters most are the tools, technology, standards, techniques, approach and best practices used to develop the MVP.
What other takeaways have you experienced since being added to the pre-qualification list? Was this something you and your team celebrated?
No, we did not celebrate yet, but we surely (will) when we win our first project as a prime. Major takeaway is that it is just not about xFusion or any other firm being agile-capable; it is more how we as a company will perform in the long run with good vested resources and deliver the same way we delivered while submitting a winning proposal.
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RICK COLLINS, DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, ONCORE CONSULTING
OnCore has been in the PQVP since April 2017
If you haven’t applied or qualified for PQVP before, what changed that persuaded you to seek qualification?
When OnCore originally sought certification for the PQVP, it was clear that California was gearing up to add more agile-based projects to the state's work portfolio. This shift to smaller agile contracts rather than the traditional large projects of the past made it essential for firms to qualify for the PQVP.
Please briefly describe your experience with the pre-qualification process. Was it easier than expected, harder than expected, or about the same as what you expected?
The state required thorough documentation of the process we followed to enable an effective evaluation of the team, the delivered product, and how we applied agile principles. In that sense, the rigor required by the pre-qualification process was somewhat harder than expected; however, it had the positive effect of challenging our technical and business analyst staff to deliver a high-quality product. Overall, it was quite a positive experience for the staff who participated in preparing our response (they received quite an ovation at an "All Hands" meeting where they demonstrated the final product to the rest of the company).
What does the pre-qualification acceptance mean to your company? Obviously the intent is to win more contracts and thus revenue. Has it opened other doors? Added extra workload to your team? Have you added personnel as a result?
We consider qualifying for the PQVP to be an essential component of OnCore's Agile-based market strategy. Our presence on the PQVP has directly resulted in new work and additional personnel for the company. We now have over 20 staff who are Certified Scrum Masters and more with public-sector digital services experience. We also continue practicing agile and DevOps internally to allow staff on non-agile projects to get hands-on experience. Though we successfully delivered on agile-based projects secured outside the PQVP, being on the PQVP provides a new, expedited mechanism to secure future work with the state.
For a company considering applying for pre-qualification, what cautions would you give? Generally, any advice?
Our advice is to go all-in and have fun with the process! Our response team thoroughly enjoyed the experience of quickly delivering value to our users in a real application — it's not often we get to role-play as the product owner. Yes, adhering to agile principles, incorporating relevant technology, and documenting everything as you go is important. But commit to capturing the spirit of delivering incremental value on behalf of your product owner, and the results will speak for themselves.
What other takeaways have you experienced since being added to the pre-qualification list? Was this something you and your team celebrated?
As mentioned earlier, we were proud of the response team and gave them an opportunity to demonstrate the product they built to the entire company at one of our semi-annual "All Hands" meetings. They introduced the various team members, described their roles, explained the process they followed, and then wrapped up with a product demonstration. The presentation was very well received and resulted in an unexpected takeaway — we lit an 'agile fire' in people at OnCore who had yet to be exposed to agile work. This new interest has served as a catalyst to expand on our core agile expertise to a wider audience within our firm.
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INFINITI CONSULTING GROUP
SCOTT DROSSOS, PRESIDENT
Infiniti is proud to be selected on its first attempt to join this pool of approved vendors, making it eligible to take on additional complex application development and cloud services work through this new contract vehicle. We are committed to serving the public sector and taking on the most challenging application and cloud services work.
Infiniti has extensive experience and capacity in migrating entire data centers to the cloud, Automation, DevOps, SysOps, DevSecOps, AI, Machine Learning, Predictive Analytics, Cloud Managed Services, Storage and Disaster Recovery.
JOHN GRAY, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER
Infiniti’s commitment to technical innovation has been a source of focus the past several years. It all starts with having the industry’s top cloud architects, and then matching that talent with to our public-sector clients most complex technology challenges and goals. Whether we’re building and tuning an algorithm to detect and prevent fraud, or re-architecting a legacy application for a government agency, we have the skill, qualifications and team depth to ensure client success.
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DALE JABLONSKY, PUBLIC SECTOR WEST ADVISORY DIRECTOR, KPMG
Please briefly describe your experience with the pre-qualification process. Was it easier than expected, harder than expected, or about the same as what you expected?
The administrative process was much easier than expected, as CDT gave us a long runway to provide the contractual documentation as well as the opportunity for CDT to review and comment on our documents (as opposed to a hard deadline and disqualification without the chance to respond).
What does the pre-qualification acceptance mean to your company? Obviously the intent is to win more contracts and thus revenue. Has it opened other doors? Added extra workload to your team? Have you added personnel as a result?
The opportunities released so far as part of the pool have been more closely aligned with staff augmentation, where KPMG is used to providing and managing complete solutions. It has, however, been an extremely useful reference to showcase KPMG’s Agile Development portfolio, since our submission is publicly available on GitHub.
For a company considering applying for pre-qualification, what cautions would you give? Generally, any advice?
Don’t underestimate the time or the effort required to put in a high-quality bid — both from a coding/development and write-up perspective.
What other takeaways have you experienced since being added to the pre-qualification list? Was this something you and your team celebrated?
There are fewer opportunities being released than we expected. Also, since the pool is being expanded to a large number of vendors, we are unclear how the competition will unfold and if the value of being on the pool will decrease. In addition, California appears to be mandating that agile has to mean open source. There appears to be limited opportunities to discuss and propose perhaps more cost-effective and lower-risk COTS (commercial off-the-shelf)-based proposals.
This story has been updated to reflect the fact that OnCore Consulting was accepted into the PQVP in April 2017.
Newly Qualified Vendors Discuss Hurdles, Gains of PQVP
The California Department of Technology announced this month that seven new vendors had been added to the Pre-Qualified Vendor Pool, bringing to 30 the number of firms having that credential in seeking state IT contracts. Techwire queried some of those firms, as well as one that's already been in the pool, to find out what the qualification process was like, whether it was tougher to qualify than they had anticipated, and how they expect it to help their firms.
