Through our CONOPS, we will express our operational strategy for managing the program.  Note, this is a method to separate the technical requirements of the opportunity from the contractual. Both canvases can and should work in tandem with each other.  The above graphic gives what may seem complicated but truly a fair and complete representation of how a company’s practice in support of a BPA should function in an IT ecosystem supporting multiple business lines with multiple vendors.  The canvas is based on zones:

​

• The Top Zone represents the customer and the centers of activity within the customer space.

• The Left Zone represents the Prime Contractor and how corporate will interact with both the customer and the team supporting the service area

• The Bottom Zone and Right Zone represent the infrastructure support area.  This may be your service area.  It is important to understand that the Portfolio users are connected to the Production Tier. If your service area is Application Development, you will be connected to the Development and Test tiers of the Infrastructure. In addition, there may be a configuration management vendor responsible for promoting code through the tiers.

• In the center is usually a , maybe even your .On one pursuit, I made Data Integrity the central theme of our CONOPS.It was the customer’s highest priority.This function provided Integrity Planning, CIS L2 Hardening, POA&M Mitigation, Audit Defense and Audit Compliance across the entire program.We determined that one of our addition Key Personnel would be a seasoned security specialist with their CISSP.

• All of this activity surrounds and supports the program itself.This canvas is configured for a BPA with Program level and Project level activities.You can configure the program boxes as you see fit, maybe by Task Area.On one program we wrapped ITIL around the other tasks to show how the framework would support the program.

​

The value of the CONOPS is that it can greatly support your proposal activity.  The communication plan is defined in the picture itself.  Your management plan can be easily drafted and the CONOPS shows how the management plan supports all other activities of the program.