Why Technical Challenges Produce Better Outcomes for our Customers

Delivery is everything. At Clarity, we focus on mission outcomes and work closely with our customers to achieve their goals. That requires extensive technical know-how, an eye for talent, a culture of continuous feedback, and the ability to identify and openly admit when we aren’t meeting the mark. The missions we support demand our best— and we continuously scale that excellence as we grow.

Many of us have served in the government and have seen how evaluation teams get buried in paperwork as soon as a solicitation is released. Proposals can be filled with clever assumptions, polished marketing language, and business models that make comparisons difficult—often disconnected from real execution. That’s why Clarity is encouraged by the growing use of technical challenges as a key evaluation method in competitive solicitations. These challenges force companies to move beyond marketing and show actual deliverables on a tight time frame.

Technical challenges don’t just assess a company’s ability to build solutions; they expose its cultural footing and test how teams handle adversity and pressure. What trade-offs did they make to deliver? How did they refine and communicate the deliverable? In high-stakes environments, agility is critical—but on paper, everyone will claim to meet that mark. Tech challenges make companies prove it.

Sorting the Talkers from the Doers

Tech Challenges aren’t a new idea. In March of 2021, US Digital Service (USDS) published a guide on running these competitions in a FAR-compliant manner. The guidance still largely holds up, offering a strong foundation for executing these evaluations.

At a high level, making the second phase of a proposal effort into a time-bound, live challenge allows companies to showcase their technical skills and response management capabilities. These factors are good proxy areas for how vendors will perform under real-world contract conditions. A well-structured challenge also reveals a company’s ability to communicate, refine, and submit a polished response—key elements of successful delivery.

One key insight often overlooked by evaluators is that technical challenges put them in direct contact with the engineers and program managers who will perform the work—not just the proposal team. Traditional proposals are often crafted by expert writers and marketing professionals who can make things sound good on paper. A technical challenge forces a personal interaction with the people who will be on the ground solving problems. It’s like a “try before you buy” moment—giving evaluators a preview of the team in action.

Live competitions provide valuable insights into how companies work internally. They expose the weak links and highlight how teams collaborate, problem-solve, and execute under pressure. They also reveal whether a company is putting forward some of their best only to win the competition or if the engineers presenting are the same ones who will be doing the work. For instance, are you hearing from the median senior engineers or just the most senior in the organization?

We love these challenges. At Clarity, our culture is built on delivering real, tech-enabled outcomes for our customers. With preparation and coordination, we know our teams will perform exceptionally well. These challenges probe how deep excellence runs within an organization and we thrive in these environments— embracing every chance to prove that our team is second to none.

Improving the Acquisition Process

There’s an ongoing discussion about how to structure software acquisitions to select companies with the highest likelihood of delivering successful outcomes. Recent policy changes have increased the use of Other Transaction Authority (OTA) for the Software Acquisition Pathway in the DoD, largely in response to concerns that FAR-based contracts incentivize rigid, waterfall-style delivery. Tech challenges help acquisition professionals identify companies with the DNA to avoid these pitfalls—something traditional proposals fail to capture.

We have seen some recent best practices emerge that build on the USDS playbook, including:

Time-gated information releases to level the playing field. The ideal competition tests for responsiveness and time-bound agility in solving or addressing a verifiable or creative problem.
Tight turnaround submission (videos, source code, etc). Hours or days may be appropriate given the depth of the challenge, but human beings verifiably producing something in response and not off-the-shelf is key.
Team composition requirements that those helping with the technical challenge have been with the company for 12 months or are materially on the submission team. This is to prevent “hired guns” for just the demonstration sections. There is some nuance here in that outside preparation help (video editing, copy editing, etc) may be acceptable if there is a desire for an amount of polish on the product that has nothing to do with delivery.
A limited pool of participants selected after an initial written or short-form video submission. This reduces the resources spent preparing for the production and evaluation.

From our own experience, we’ve learned that preparing for these challenges sharpens an organization’s understanding of customer needs, strengthens solutioning skills, and enhances the ability to perform under pressure. We won’t reveal all the strategies that have made us successful, but every challenge we’ve taken on has made our team stronger.

The Future Belongs to the Ready

Long-term software contract failures often stem from a lack of the right talent or an inability to adapt to the day-to-day challenges of government work. The best partners invest in their teams, develop their people, and balance growth with readiness. Tech challenges and other novel acquisition approaches help companies demonstrate their readiness and show the real strength of their current employees. Staffing up will always be a component of any major contract, but knowing the past performance in talent acquisition and retention is a strong indicator of future success.

If you’re a customer or government entity interested in learning more, we’re happy to share additional insights. We’ve seen what works well across the Defense, Intelligence, and Fed/Civ space. The importance of the mission is paramount, and we’re always eager to engage in conversations that drive better outcomes.

At Clarity, we believe in proving our expertise where it matters most. And we look forward to competing against the best to show it.

Jay Bonci,

Jason Bonci is the Data & Systems GM at Clarity. Previously, he served as the Department of the Air Force Chief Technology Officer, guiding the strategic vision for Enterprise IT. Before that, he was Senior Director of Public Sector Engineering at Akamai Technologies, leading a team of 60 engineers and overseeing key defense initiatives like the DoD’s Global Content Delivery Service and the Shepherd protective DNS program.