Guides

Three documents in federal contracting all describe the work to be done, and they get used almost interchangeably in conversation even though they are meaningfully different. A Statement of Work (SOW) tells the contractor what to do and how to do it. A Performance Work Statement (PWS) states the results required and lets the contractor decide how to achieve them. A Statement of Objectives (SOO) goes further still: the government provides only its high-level objectives, and the offeror proposes the entire approach. The single axis that separates them is who decides the “how.” ...

If you have heard someone say “we are in capture,” “the gate review is Thursday,” or “red team is next week,” you have been standing inside the Shipley process without necessarily knowing it. Shipley is the de facto industry-standard framework for how government contractors pursue and win work. At its core it is a seven-phase business development lifecycle that runs from early market research all the way through to activities after the proposal is submitted, with two different kinds of review checkpoints layered on top. Almost every term in the rest of these guides lives at some point on that timeline. ...