GE 620 — Teaming, Joint Ventures & Subcontracting (14-week elective syllabus)
No serious pursuit is an island. The capability you lack, the past performance you cannot manufacture, the vehicle you do not hold, the set-aside you do not qualify for — all of it is reachable through a team. This elective teaches the teaming decision as a discipline: how to choose a posture, how to pick a partner, how to structure the agreement, and how to govern the relationship after it is signed.
Course number: GE 620 · Credits: 3 · Format: 14 weeks, one 75-minute session per week (plus reading and a weekly deliverable). Audience: Graduate students in the MS program; capture managers, principals, and small-business owners who will make or take a teaming call. Prerequisites: GC 520 (organizational theory) recommended — teaming is governance across a boundary. GC 540 (advanced finance) recommended for the subcontract-pricing weeks. Texts: the doctrine and literacy folders of this repository; the course reader on teaming, SBA affiliation, and subcontracting. The course is stack-agnostic by design (doctrine/08).
Learning outcomes
By the end of this course, a student can:
- Explain why teams win: the capability gap, the past-performance gap, the vehicle gap, and the set-aside gate that no solo firm can open alone.
- Choose among the canonical teaming postures — prime solo, prime with subs, subcontractor, joint venture, mentor-protege — from the facts of a pursuit.
- Run a capability-gap analysis that ranks what must be closed (clearances hardest, labor categories easiest) and drives the posture decision.
- Evaluate a potential partner against a defensible rubric: past performance, clearances and certifications, financial stability, cultural alignment, existing relationship, customer relationship, vehicle access — with critical dimensions scored as knockouts.
- Apply the set-aside-aware constraints: small-business participation floors, limitations on subcontracting, and the SBA rules that govern who is "small" in a team.
- Distinguish the legal and structural forms — teaming agreement, joint venture, mentor-protege agreement — and choose the form that fits the strategy.
- Draft the terms of a teaming arrangement: scope, commitment, exclusivity, IP, and the exit.
- Manage the seam after signing: subcontract flow-down, performance risk, and the dispute that ends the relationship.
- Use teaming as a displacement play — team around an entrenched incumbent — and as an entry play into a locked vehicle.
Weekly schedule
| Week | Theme | In-session (75 min) | Reading / material | Assignment due next week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Why teams win | The capability gap, the past-performance gap, the vehicle gap, the set-aside gate. Teaming as the gap-closure mechanism. | doctrine/07; the teaming canon at concept altitude | One-page memo: for a case pursuit, name the gap that makes teaming necessary and the gap that does not. |
| 2 | The posture decision | Prime solo, prime with subs, sub, JV, mentor-protege. What each posture buys, what it costs, and the indicators that point to it. | the teaming-posture canon at concept altitude | Posture memo: recommend a posture for a case pursuit with the indicators that drive it. |
| 3 | Capability-gap analysis | Ranking the gaps: clearances, past performance, certifications, labor categories. What can be bought, what must be teamed, what cannot be closed. | the gap-analysis canon at concept altitude | Gap analysis: score the required capabilities of a case solicitation against a case firm and rank the gaps. |
| 4 | The partner rubric | Evaluating a partner: past performance, clearances and certs, financial stability, cultural alignment, existing relationship, customer relationship, vehicle access. Critical dimensions as knockouts. | the partner-rubric canon at concept altitude | Scorecard: run three candidate partners through the rubric for a case pursuit; rank them and justify. |
| 5 | Set-aside-aware teaming | Small-business participation, limitations on subcontracting, and the floors that govern a team on a set-aside. | the set-aside-aware teaming canon at concept altitude; doctrine/01 | Compliance memo: design a team that meets the participation floors for a set-aside case pursuit. |
| 6 | Who is "small" in a team | SBA affiliation rules: when two firms are one firm for size purposes, and when a JV is treated as small. The boundary that decides eligibility. | the course reader on SBA affiliation; doctrine/01 | Eligibility memo: for a proposed team, determine small-business status and affiliation risk. |
| 7 | Forms and structures | Teaming agreement, JV, mentor-protege: the legal forms, the commitments, the seams. Choosing the form that fits the strategy. | the course reader on teaming forms | Form-selection memo: for a case pursuit, choose the teaming form and state the structural reasons. |
| 8 | The agreement | Scope, commitment, exclusivity, IP, and exit. What a teaming agreement must say to be worth signing. | the course reader on teaming agreements | Draft the key clauses of a teaming agreement for a case partnership. |
| 9 | Midterm | In-class: run a full teaming decision for a case pursuit — gap analysis, posture, partners, form, terms. | (review weeks 1–8) | Midterm submission. |
| 10 | Managing the seam | Flow-down, performance risk, and the daily governance of a team. The subcontract as the governance instrument. | the course reader on subcontracting | Subcontract memo: design the flow-down and performance-management structure for a case subcontract. |
| 11 | Teaming as a displacement play | Team around the entrenched incumbent; use a partner's vehicle to enter a locked market. When the competitor becomes the teammate. | the incumbent-displacement and teaming canon at concept altitude | Displacement memo: design a team-around play for an entrenched-incumbent case pursuit. |
| 12 | Risks: affiliation, OCI, IP | The three seams that break teams: affiliation (size), organizational conflict of interest, and intellectual property. | doctrine/04; the course reader on teaming risk | Risk memo: for a case team, identify the affiliation, OCI, and IP exposures and the mitigation for each. |
| 13 | Capstone exercise | Design a full teaming strategy for a real (closed) pursuit: posture, partners, form, terms, set-aside posture, risk. | (exercise) | Draft teaming strategy. |
| 14 | Synthesis | The teaming strategist's desk. Final defense of the teaming strategy before a panel that plays the partners. | (course synthesis) | Final teaming strategy, revised after defense. |
Assessment summary
- Weekly deliverables — 40%. A cumulative teaming dossier: gap analysis, posture, scorecards, terms, risk.
- Midterm — 20%. In-class full teaming decision.
- Capstone teaming strategy — 30%. A complete teaming design for a real (closed) pursuit, defended before a panel.
- Participation and peer review — 10%.
The graduate rubric
| Criterion | Excellent | Proficient | Developing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gap reasoning | Gaps ranked correctly and the posture follows from them | Gaps identified, posture weakly linked | Posture asserted without gap analysis |
| Partner discipline | Partners scored against a rubric; knockouts enforced | Rubric applied loosely | Partner chosen by intuition |
| Set-aside correctness | Size, affiliation, and participation floors handled correctly | Mostly correct | Eligibility errors |
| Seam governance | Terms, flow-down, and risk are explicit | Seams acknowledged | Seams ignored |
Policies
- Real teaming, safe exercises. Case teams are real (closed) procurements and real firms' public facts; no live negotiation and no non-public partner information.
- Integrity. A teaming design that proposes circumventing size or set-aside rules fails outright.
- Late work. An honest early warning beats a silent late submission.
The teaming call is the highest-leverage decision most small firms never study. This course studies it.