18F/18f.gsa.gov

---
title: "Labor category descriptions for agile procurements"
layout: post

date: 2015-03-10

tags:
- agile
- procurement
- acquisition services
- tools you can use
image: 
authors:
- chrisc
excerpt: "Clients of 18F Consulting frequently ask for help defining labor categories for agile contracts. We’ve published these definitions in a public GitHub repo so other acquisition professionals can benefit from them, too. Read on for more details."
description: "Clients of 18F Consulting frequently ask for help defining labor categories for agile contracts. We’ve published these definitions in a public GitHub repo so other acquisition professionals can benefit from them, too. Read on for more details."
---

[18F Consulting]({{ site.baseurl }}/consulting/) provides hands-on consulting services to Federal leaders who need assistance in designing and managing software acquisitions that use modern development practices such as [user-centered design](https://18f.gsa.gov/2014/09/25/design-studio-onrr/), [agile](https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/02/11/a-story-of-an-agile-workshop/), and [open source](https://18f.gsa.gov/2014/11/26/how-to-use-more-open-source/). In short, think of us as your in-house technical brains for your next software acquisition.

One of the frequent requests that we receive from our clients is to help them define labor categories for their digital/agile contracts. In case you're unfamiliar with the term labor category, it's more or less Federal procurement speak for a job description that an outside vendor is required to perform.

Since other acquisition professionals could benefit from these descriptions as well, we posted them on a [website](https://pages.18f.gov/agile-labor-categories/) and [public GitHub repo](https://github.com/18F/agile-labor-categories). (As a side note, many of these labor category descriptions were adapted from the [UK’s Government Service Design Manual](https://www.gov.uk/service-manual), in accordance with its [Open Government Licence v2.0](http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/2/)). Feel free to use these descriptions as a template to communicate the types of resources you need in your next agile procurement. In fact, we plan to do just that for our upcoming [Agile Delivery Services Request for Quote](https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/01/08/creating-a-federal-marketplace-for-agile-delivery-services/).