One firm, three candidates, and a scorecard that says no.
This is the Service-to-Product Fit scorecard from Shrink-Wrap It applied to a composite firm. Every score, every weight and every threshold check is on this page, so you can recompute the result yourself before you decide whether the Harvest Sprint is worth its fee.
This firm is composite. It is not a client, and no client's numbers appear on this page. The arithmetic is real and the scoring rules are the ones the engagement uses. The scores are illustrative, chosen to show the case that matters most: a candidate that clears the weighted threshold and still does not proceed.
The firm
- Size
- 58 people
- Revenue
- $14M, concentrated in two primes
- Vehicles
- One GSA MAS schedule, one agency IDIQ
- Delivery
- Authorization package support, two agencies, both through one prime
- The question
- Can the assessment be sold as a product?
The firm brought three candidates from its delivery record. Two were eliminated before scoring: one was a one-off program with a single sponsor, and one was a people-staffing line with no deliverable to productize. The third is below.
The scorecard
Six dimensions, scored 1 to 5. The weights sum to 100%. The weighted total is the sum of each score multiplied by its weight.
| Dimension | Weight | Score | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
Repeatability The same package runs at every program office. Roughly 90% of the work is the same evidence set, the same review pass and the same document structure. Two people deliver three of these a quarter without redesigning anything. | 20% | 5 | 1.00 |
Cross-Agency Demand Two agencies have bought the work, and both came through the same prime. There is no independent third agency with a budget line, and no route to one that does not run through that relationship. | 15% | 2 | 0.30 |
Compliance Leverage The package exists because an authorizing official needs evidence. Compliance is the product, not a cost on top of it. The deliverable is a package the official can accept. | 15% | 5 | 0.75 |
Vehicle Access Both vehicles accept a product CLIN at this scope, and both have carried work of this size. Two program offices inside the existing agencies have asked for a fixed-price version, so the first buyers are named rather than hoped for. | 20% | 5 | 1.00 |
ATO Feasibility An authority to operate is required if the package becomes a hosted service. No sponsor has committed. The path is understood and unfunded, and the cost is material against this product's projected margin. | 15% | 2 | 0.30 |
Economic Viability Break-even is four program offices, and four exist across the two agencies already buying. Three-year revenue clears five times the investment at a realistic win rate. The model does not require winning a third agency. | 15% | 5 | 0.75 |
| Weighted total | 100% | 4.10 |
The five threshold checks
A weighted total is not a decision. All five checks must pass for the tier to be Proceed. One failure downgrades it.
- Weighted total is at least 3.0Passed. Total is 4.10
- No dimension scored 1Passed. Lowest score is 2
- At most one dimension scored 2Failed. 2 dimensions scored 2 — this check failed
- Vehicle Access is at least 2Passed. Scored 5
- Economic Viability is at least 2Passed. Scored 5
Two dimensions are vetoes, not points. A score of 1 on Vehicle Access or Economic Viability eliminates the candidate before the tier is reported, whatever the weighted total says. This one scores 5 on both, so the veto does not fire.
4.10 on the weighted total. That clears the 4.0 Proceed threshold. The tier is Investigate anyway, because one check failed and two dimensions scored 2.
This is the part that matters. A vendor selling you a build would read the 4.10 and quote a price. The scorecard reads the two 2s and stops, because the ATO has no sponsor and the demand runs through one relationship. Building now would produce a product with no second buyer and no authority to host it.
What the memo recommends
Do not go to Build. Go to Architect, and only after two things are true: a named sponsor for the authority to operate, and a third agency with a budget line that does not run through the existing prime.
Do not sell the other two candidates as products. One is a program with a single sponsor and one is staff augmentation. Both are fine work. Neither is a product, and packaging either would spend the firm's credibility on something a contracting officer will see through.
The product would displace some of the service. The same buyers who buy the package today would buy the product instead, at a lower price. That is acceptable only if the product reaches program offices the service never reaches. If it does not, the correct answer is to keep selling the service and stop here.
The deliverable is a memo, not a deck. Six pages: the candidates, the scores with reasons, the threshold result, the two things that must be true before Architect, and the cost of getting it wrong. A board can read it in ten minutes and disagree with it in writing.
This is the read the Harvest Sprint produces, at from $15,000. It is a 10 to 15 page memo with the candidates, the scores and the reasons, and it ends with a straight answer. Every number here is a floor, not a quote. Final scope depends on firm size, how many contract vehicles you hold, and how much of the work is already productized. We confirm the figure in writing before anything starts.
The Build Pilot starts at from $50,000 and only makes sense once a candidate clears both the total and the checks. The Federal Activation Audit is the other first rung. It reads vehicles and certifications rather than product candidates, so it answers a different question.
If you want the method behind the scorecard, how to productize a government contract covers the data-rights test, the six stages, and the scoring that decides whether a candidate is worth the spend.
For a readiness read before you spend anything, run the free Signal. It is a 30-question diagnostic across leadership, operations and market, not the S2P scorecard, and it takes about eight minutes.
If you want the shape of the deliverable rather than the arithmetic, the composite memo is four printable pages in the format the Harvest Sprint produces.