U.S. Digital Service: Technical Challenge Playbook
A practical playbook for designing and running technical challenges in procurement to evaluate vendors’ real-world problem-solving ability rather than just written proposals.
This playbook provides a step-by-step framework for planning, executing, and evaluating technical challenges during vendor selection, including identifying discriminators, turning them into evaluation criteria, designing realistic challenge scenarios, and running test trials before launch (pp. 4–9).
It emphasizes assessing how teams solve problems—not just whether they can code—by observing collaboration, design thinking, and engineering decisions in action (p. 3). The guide also covers logistics, documentation, debriefing, protest defense, and retrospectives to help agencies run fair, defensible, and effective challenge-based evaluations that lead to better procurement outcomes.
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