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Federal contracting is at an inflection point. AI is reshaping proposal development while agencies are emphasizing orals in evaluation criteria. The promise is real. So are the pitfalls. A disciplined approach to AI adoption separates the winners from the casualties.

Leaner RFPs. Mission-focused evaluation. Compressed timelines. The federal acquisition environment is shifting faster than most BD teams are adapting. If your capture strategy looks the same as it did two years ago, you're already behind.

Agencies are under pressure to accelerate. Shorter windows. Faster awards. Less patience for contractors who need time to spin up. The teams pulling ahead aren't faster—they're ready before the clock starts. Readiness is now a competitive advantage.

You can backfill a role. You can't backfill ten years of customer relationships and hard-won instincts. The revolving door of BD talent is gutting win rates across the industry. The time to build resilience is before the next departure, not after.

Your team's AI results aren't inconsistent because the tools are unreliable. It's a context problem — and it's costing you time and competitive positioning on every pursuit. This article breaks down the four-perspective framework that turns unpredictable AI experiments into a repeatable advantage.

Color team reviews are business development milestones at which experts and managers work to improve the win potential of pursuits. Done correctly, they are a cost effective way to improve the overall success of your capture planning and proposal development efforts.

Most of us know how vital color team reviews are to ensuring a well-written, concise solution for our customers. But these reviews can get tricky and become ineffective if we’re not careful. During Shipley’s most recent webinar on color team reviews, we were asked many questions about how to hold effective reviews. But, by far, the most popular question was, “who do I invite?”The answer? It depends on the size, scope, and complexity of the pursuits as well as the size and mission of your organization. Color team reviews should be tailored to fit the environment and the pursuit size and complexity.

A cycle is a progression through a series of stages leading to a desired result. In business development, the lifecycle is about winning business. You’re not winning just any business, but business that is sustainable and profitable that helps the organization meet its objectives.

Capture Planning is the process of identifying the opportunities, assessing the environment, and devising and implementing winning strategies oriented toward capturing a specific business opportunity. Consistently successful capture planning requires a written, action-oriented capture plan.

Bidding on large contract vehicles, including multiple-award IDIQs (for instance Governmentwide Acquisition Contracts [GWACs]) can be challenging and time-consuming for any organization...

Capture (opportunity) management requires careful and precise execution of a well-developed capture plan. Developing the plan is important. Executing the plan is difficult but essential. Capture managers are generally made, not born. Most organizations develop capture managers internally as they gain awareness of company strategies for growth or market positioning. The capture manager is generally the primary person responsible for winning or losing opportunities and directs customer contact before, during, and after a proposal is submitted.

Some best practices in proposal writing, improve your writing and your win rate by applying these seven rules

Storyboards and Mockups are planning tools used to develop and review new content before writing text. Like any tool, they should save time and improve quality to justify their use...

Probability of Win (Pwin) remains one of the most misunderstood concepts in business development today...