SD-Agile Partner Program
Stop selling hours. Start selling outcomes.
The butts-in-seats model that has driven government contracting for decades is not going to survive the AI era. If you already know that, we should talk.
What's coming
Firm-fixed-price is coming to IT. Fast.
For decades the unit of sale in government IT has been the hour. Bill more of them, win. That arrangement only held because delivery capacity and headcount were the same thing.
They are not the same thing anymore. When a small team with AI code generation can produce what used to take a floor of people, the hour stops describing anything a client wants to buy. Contracting officers are going to notice, and some already have. Firm-fixed-price deliverables and success-based contracting are moving into IT, and the firms whose whole economic model assumes billable hours are going to find that out the hard way.
The uncomfortable part is that the transition punishes exactly the behavior the old model rewarded. If your margin depends on how long the work takes, you have no incentive to finish. Under fixed price, that same instinct is what kills you.
The opening
Scale was the moat. It isn't anymore.
Large primes have not won on quality for a long time. They won on the ability to put hundreds of people on a contract and absorb the overhead of chasing it.
AI-enabled code generation should be the end of that advantage. A well-trained four-person SD-Agile team can out-deliver a traditional agile team many times its size — because the constraint was never typing speed, it was how much unstated intent the team had to guess at. Fix the specification problem and a small team stops being a limitation and starts being an advantage: less coordination overhead, less translation loss, fewer people who have to be told what somebody else already decided.
That is the opening for small business, and it will not stay open forever. The firms that build this capability while the buying side is still figuring out what to ask for are the ones who will be positioned when it asks.
Who we're looking for
It's a values question before it's a capability question.
We can teach the methodology. We cannot teach a firm to care whether the thing it delivered actually worked.
Apply if
You care more about your clients' missions — and whether what you deliver enables mission success — than about how many hours you booked. You are ready to sell the quality and effectiveness of your deliverables instead of competing on cost alone. You would rather be the firm that finishes than the firm that stays.
Don't, if
Your growth plan is more seats on more contracts, and you would rather not know whether the software works as long as the invoices clear. Nothing here will help you, and the partnership would be uncomfortable for both of us.
What you get
Three things. Named, not gestured at.
Most partner programs describe their benefits in a way that survives contact with a lawyer but not with a question. Here are ours.
Your people train free
We train your people at no cost. The methodology only produces the result if the people running it actually know it, so we would rather remove the reason not to learn it than sell you a discount on it.
Preferred rates
On platform licensing and engagements. The Partner Program is the only route to preferred rates — there is no rate you get for being a contractor, or for being large.
Engineering support on live deals
When you are chasing a specific opportunity, we work the pursuit with you — systems engineering help on the deal in front of you. Not a webinar, not a partner portal, not a slide template.
How it works
Three steps. No portal.
There is no application portal and no partner tier questionnaire. There are three steps and an email address.
- 01Write to us
Tell us what your firm builds, who you build it for, and one contract where the hours model got in the way of doing right by the client. That last one tells us more than a capability statement does. - 02We talk
A real conversation about your delivery model, where fixed-price would break you today, and what would have to change. If it isn't a fit we will say so quickly rather than string you along. - 03Your people get certified
Partnership rests on your teams actually holding the credentials. The methodology only produces the result if the people running it know it, which is why this is a step and not a formality.
None of that waits on a signature. Your people can start taking online courses today, and the conversation goes better when they already have.
Become an SD-Agile partner.
The shift to outcome-based contracting is going to happen with you or to you. One is considerably better.