TTS Acquisition Division Team Roles & Responsibilities

Members of the TTS Acquisition Division can serve in a variety of different roles. This document is designed to provide information on what to expect from each role within TTS’s Acquisition Division team. Not all of these positions will be included on each procurement.

Contracting Officer (CO)

The contracting officer serves as the official buyer of supplies and services on behalf of TTS. They achieve this authority by obtaining a warrant, which proves they have met certain training, education, experience, and certification requirements. As an underlying condition of their warrant, all warranted CO’s are required to attain and maintain the appropriate , external,FAC-C certification. Responsibilities may include but are not limited to:

• Serving as the final decision-maker for all contractual matters.
• Holding the final authority for all TTS contractual actions and only person to change the terms and conditions of contract.
• Planning, developing, and establishing the acquisition strategy for a procurement in collaboration with the team.
• Developing a pre-negotiation position, determining and justifying the types of contracts and negotiation authority to be used, and leading contract negotiations.
• Coordinating the efforts of various subject-matter experts engaged in the procurement (program managers, technical advisors, legal, financial managers, etc.).
• Leading a post-award kick-off meeting, to set the foundation for successful contract administration through a common understanding of the contract/objectives, each team member’s responsibilities, and how they will manage the contract together.
• Directing the full range of contract administration actions required for the procurement including the issuance of contract modifications, negotiation of changes, exercise of options, contractor performance appraisal, subcontractor surveillance, disposition of claims, contract close-out and similar matters.
• This role reports to the Assistant Commissioner (Director) of the TTS Office of Acquisition.

Acquisition (Contracting) Lead

The acquisition contracting lead primarily serves on the consulting team as the business advisor and/or consultant on a particular procurement. They are not the CO with the warrant authority, but provide subject matter expertise to that role. The Acquisition Lead has 1102 experience as documented in their resume. Responsibilities may include but are not limited to:

• Helping partner agencies through the acquisition consulting process, shaping their acquisition documents to reflect best practices in digital-services procurement.
• Performing market research on cutting-edge digital services and products to aid internal and external clients with acquisition strategy and planning.
• Using existing procurement regulations and statutes to devise acquisition strategies and advise agencies on opportunities for great digital service contracts.
• Working with both federal and state partner agencies to follow each of their statutory and regulatory procurement guidelines.
• Working with TTS and partner agencies to create new contracting processes and methodologies for digital procurement.
• This role reports to the Assistant Commissioner (Director) of the TTS Office of Acquisition.

Contracting Officer Representative (COR)

The COR serves as the contracting officer’s “eyes and ears.” They monitor contractor performance to ensure the contract’s articulated outcomes are being achieved. A COR is responsible for attaining and maintaining required , external,FAC-COR certifications. Resources and guides to help the COR fulfill their duties can be found , external,TTS-only, here. The employee can serve as either a term appointee or career employee of GSA. Post award responsibilities may include but are not limited to:

• Understanding the terms of a contract and ensuring that the contractor and federal government meet their contractual obligations.
• Maintaining an open line of communication between the federal government and the contractor.
• Participating in software development rituals like Daily Standups, Sprint Reviews, Sprint Retros, and Sprint Planning meetings.
• Coordinate with technical lead and other team members to ensure the government is getting what we procured and not exceeding obligation.
• Maintaining a system of records, including a COR folder.
• Identifying and troubleshooting day-to-day problems with the contract and alerting the CO of possible contractual issues.
• Reviewing submissions of reports, deliverables, data, and other documentation.
• Evaluating and processing invoices.
• Mitigating the differing levels of risk associated with the contract, their potential impacts, and addressing them at the appropriate level.
• Evaluating and documenting contractor performance [via Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP)] and sharing any concerns to the CO.
• This role reports to the Assistant Commissioner (Director) of the TTS Office of Acquisition.

Procurement Analyst

The procurement analysts serves as the focal point for TTS procurement oversight and internal controls. The procurement analyst also serves as the subject matter expert on TTS procurement policy and guidance. Responsibilities may include but are not limited to:

• Establishing a foundation of sound policies, procedures, and processes to ensure TTS achieves excellent acquisition outcomes.
• Developing guidance and documenting business processes that maximize operational efficiencies while ensuring TTS maintains robust internal controls and meets federal compliance requirements.
• Ensuring the TTS acquisition workforce has access to the training, tools, and professional experiences necessary to carry out their roles.
• Reviewing and providing recommendation on TTS’ procurement actions to ensure compliance with federal and agency regulations.
• Serving as System Administrators for procurement-related systems (EASi, FPDS-NG, CPARs, etc.).
• Coordinating responses to procurement related data calls.
• This role reports to the Assistant Commissioner (Director) of the TTS Office of Acquisition.

Team Lead

The team lead serves as the Senior Management Team (SMT) representative and as the lead and manager for a cross-functional team of TTS Office of Acquisition employees and detailees. They serve as an advocate for the team and fosters strong collaboration within the team and across teams. Responsibilities may include but are not limited to:

• Articulating and communicating the assignment, project, problem to be solved, actionable events, milestones, program issues under review, and deadlines/completion timeframes to the team.
• Advising the team on selecting and applying problem-solving methods and techniques.
• Advising the team in identifying, distributing, and balancing workload among employees in accordance with established workflows, skill level, and/or occupational specialization.
• This role reports to the Assistant Commissioner (Director) of the TTS Office of Acquisition.

Engagement Manager

The Engagement manager serves as client-facing liaison for the team. The Engagement manager on TTS Acquisitions projects empowers the project team to do their best work, advocates for the partner agency and ensures top-notch customer service.

• Owns logistics for project team, including staffing, agreements, scheduling of high level meetings, billing and invoices
• Leads agency partner relationship, including:
  • Sets and manages expectations on what TTS Acquisition is delivering at the project level
  • Engages stakeholders
  • Gains understanding of who needs to be present (in coordination with the team) and advocate for them to be present
  • Manages communications of broader TTS changes and other important messaging opportunities
• Ensures that appropriate stakeholders understand the duties of the key players associated with a TTS procurement.
• Escalates project risks
• Leads transition between different parts of TTS to ensure continuity for the agency partner.
• Contributing to the culture and knowledge of the federal government by practicing and enthusiastically sharing agile methodologies throughout all stages of the project lifecycle.
• In coordination with the client’s Product Owner, FAS AAS (NCR) and the Product Manager, the contracting shop of record at GSA, they consult on acquisition strategy and draft solicitation documents (to possibly include RFI and RFQ) that allow for vendors to work in a flexible, agile way to meet real user needs.
• This role reports to the Assistant Commissioner (Director) of the TTS Office of Acquisition.

Product Manager

The product lead works in close collaboration with our government partners to define a compelling product vision and a strategy informed by both organizational goals and end user needs. They support government agencies who plan to work with vendors to fulfill this vision, helping them adapt their approach to contracting and vendor collaboration to support modern, user-centered principles. Responsibilities may include but are not limited to:

• Creating or stewarding the product vision and strategy
• Driving a cross-functional team to deliver the right product to the right audience
• In coordination with the Engagement Manager, client’s Product Owner, and FAS AAS (NCR), the contracting shop of record at GSA, they consult on acquisition strategy and draft solicitation documents (to possibly include RFI and RFQ) that allow for vendors to work in a flexible, agile way to meet real user needs.
• Developing hypotheses and conducting tests to identify findings that may then be utilized to enhance the procurement of digital services.
• Coordinate assessments of the progress/transformation within the partner agency Mentoring and coaching the team and the vendor on Agile product management best practices.
• In coordination with the COR, providing contract administration and oversight of the vendor’s work, including code review and acceptance via merged pull requests. This includes holding the vendor accountable for well written, documented, and well-tested code with ongoing feedback loops to improve code quality.
• Overseeing the vendor’s user research and help educate our Product Owner and stakeholders about what good user research actually looks like. This includes discovery research, interviews, ongoing usability testing, and more.
• Helping the Product Owner define and hold the vision for the product, ensuring that the work of the team meets real user needs and can be validated with user feedback.
• Encouraging the use of open source and reusability, helping prevent vendor lock in and inability to maintain a product over the long term.
• Working with stakeholders to ensure best practices around DevOps and security, ensuring that appropriate tradeoffs are taken into account when making decisions about security, usability, and deployment pipeline.
• Conducting workshops and discovery research to help the Product Owner and stakeholders arrive at shared vision and direction, and an outcome-oriented workflow
• Participating in software development rituals like Daily Standups, Sprint Reviews, Sprint Retros, and Sprint Planning meetings.
• Check out the , external,18F Product Guide for more information on this role!
• This role reports to the Assistant Commissioner (Director) of the TTS Office of Acquisition.

Technical Lead

The technical lead serves as a client-facing liaison between the TTS team, the client partner, and the vendor teams. The role is that of a software engineer who provides technical advice, advocacy, consulting, while also monitoring vendor technical performance. Responsibilities may include but are not limited to:

• Advocating for and ensuring that the federal government obtains high-quality, well-tested, maintainable code across an entire project lifecycle to help better meet project mission objectives and minimize future maintenance costs.
• Contributing to the culture and knowledge of the federal government by practicing and enthusiastically sharing agile methodologies throughout all stages of the project lifecycle.
• Meeting customer expectations along with organizational goals by producing high-quality, user-centered, open source software that meets end-user needs through the application of technical knowledge, problem-solving analysis, and risk calculation.
• Supporting client agency's transition to continuous delivery, the ability to get changes of all types, including new features, configuration changes, bug fixes and experiments, into production, or into the hands of users.
• Informing the acquisition team and client to better understand and, if appropriate, address technical constraints such as future maintenance cost impacts and interfaces with systems.
• Contributing to post award tasks in coordination with the COR such as: participating in software development rituals (e.g., Standups, Sprint Reviews, Sprint Retros, and Sprint Planning meetings), reviewing code, and issuing technical direction within the scope of the contract/order so long as it does not involve changes to the scope, price, schedule, nor terms and conditions of the order.
• This role reports to the Assistant Commissioner (Director) of the TTS Office of Acquisition.

User Experience Design Lead

The user experience design lead serves as the human-centered design advocate for TTS and the federal government. The designer’s disciplines can range from content to user experience or visual design. Responsibilities may include but are not limited to:

• Providing mentorship, corrections, and feedback on user research and UX design methods to both TTS team members and contracted design staff.
• Guiding contracted design staff to synthesize research data into thematic information for product management and client agencies to make informed product choices.
• Integrating user research and screen interaction design into agile development sprints, coordinating with development and product management teams on digital procurement projects.
• Conducting discovery research to help understand user personas, user needs, jobs to be done, workflows, problem statements, etc
• Conducting or overseeing research, using methods such as card sorting, contextual inquiry, design studios, field research, and many others described in , external,https://methods.18f.gov/.
• Creating or overseeing the creation of design artifacts including wireframes, mockups, site maps, flowcharts, or storyboards.
• Designing and implementing or providing oversight of regular usability testing.
• Building meaningful relationships with customers or partners to help them understand and embrace user centered, iterative approach to understanding problems and building solutions.
• Participating in software development rituals like Daily Standups, Sprint Reviews, Sprint Retros, and Sprint Planning meetings.
• This role reports to the Assistant Commissioner (Director) of the TTS Office of Acquisition.

How we work: Potential team structure

|---|---| |Example Internal Buy Team
(working on a TTS-funded procurement action)|Example Consulting Team
(Providing government-to-government procurement strategy consulting)| |Contracting Officer (CO)|Acquisition Lead| |Product Manager|Product Manager| |Technical Lead|Design Lead| |Contracting Officer Representative (COR)|Technical Lead| |Procurement Analyst|Engagement Manager| |Engagement Manager| |