Study Plan — Solo Professional
A week-by-week path for a working professional learning solo — about 8 weeks at 3–4 hours a week. You have real-world context, so the plan moves faster through the doctrine and spends your scarce hours on the practice and the artifacts.
How to use this plan. Each week is one focused block. "Read" is the doctrine + a literacy map; "Do" is the practice bank; "Produce" is a concrete artifact you can show someone (your manager, a hiring panel, a future teammate); "Check" is the answer keys + re-reading what you missed. Keep the worked exemplar open as your model — it is the whole discipline, done once, with the reasoning visible.
Your materials: the doctrine, the literacy, the practice bank + answer keys, the worked exemplar, the Ravonics case.
Your object: by week 3, pick a real, published and closed solicitation from SAM.gov or Grants.gov that fits your actual organization (or a firm you want to work with). It becomes your personal project for the whole plan.
Week 1 — The shape of the market
- Read: doctrine/01, doctrine/02, and where-the-money-flows. Skim the glossary (literacy/glossary) as a reference.
- Do: practice D01-E2, D01-E3, D02-E2.
- Produce: a half-page answer to "where does the money live for my organization?" — the agencies, the NAICS codes, the vehicles, the certification posture. This is your entry point, in writing.
- Check: answers D01-E2/E3, D02-E2.
Week 2 — The pipeline as a decision machine
- Read: doctrine/03, doctrine/04.
- Do: practice D03-E2, D03-E3, D04-E2.
- Produce: the gate charter for one pursuit your organization actually faces (or should face) — the bid/no-bid, threshold, and readiness gates with criteria written in advance, evidence, and an owner for each.
- Check: answers D03-E2/E3, D04-E2, SI-E3 (the gate-charter model).
Week 3 — Read one document for real
- Pick your solicitation (see above).
- Read: the full how-to-read-an-rfp or how-to-read-a-nofo map.
- Do: practice SC-E3 (compliance matrix) and SC-E4 (strategy reading) on your solicitation.
- Produce: the two artifacts — the matrix (every "shall," its section, where the response satisfies it) and the one-page strategy reading (what the evaluator actually cares about).
- Check: compare against the worked exemplar's Step 3 and the answers SC-E3/E4.
Week 4 — The score: turn a hunch into a number
- Read: doctrine/05.
- Do: practice D05-E2, D05-E4.
- Produce: the scored pursuit sheet for your solicitation — pWin argued factor by factor with evidence, value grounded in the solicitation's numbers, composite = pWin × value, a threshold you set in advance, and a one-paragraph bid/no-bid recommendation.
- Check: answers D05-E2/E4; compare to the worked exemplar's Steps 2 and 5.
- Bonus: run a sensitivity check on your weakest factor — the call should survive it.
Week 5 — The ORBITAL: structure the pursuit
- Read: doctrine/06.
- Do: practice D06-E2, D06-E3.
- Produce: the seven-axis ORBITAL for your solicitation — objective, resources, budget, indicators, transport, activities, logistics — with the budget axis showing value and cost, and the logistics axis naming what must be true for the work to happen.
- Check: answers D06-E2/E3; compare to the worked exemplar's Step 4.
- Bonus: the hardest axis is a diagnostic — if it was logistics, name the agreement/clearance/facility that must be executed; if it was indicators, sharpen the objective.
Week 6 — The lifecycle and your position in it
- Read: doctrine/07, doctrine/08.
- Do: practice D07-E2, D07-E3, D08-E2, D08-E3.
- Produce: a half-page placement of your organization on the Dream → ORBITAL → World lifecycle — where it is, and the two moves that would advance it.
- Check: answers D07-E2/E3, D08-E2/E3.
Week 7 — Assemble the package
- Produce: your mini-capstone (INT-E1) — all artifacts from weeks 3–5 assembled into one pursuit package: compliance matrix, strategy reading, ORBITAL, score, gate charter, and the written bid/no-bid defense.
- Check: grade yourself against the capstone rubric and the worked exemplar. If your solicitation's competition has run, do the post-mortem (INT-E2): look up the actual award and update your pWin factors.
Week 8 — Make it real: the 15-minute brief
- Produce: a 15-minute brief of your pursuit package, as if presenting to a decision-maker — the recommendation up front, the score, the structure, the defense. Deliver it to a colleague, a manager, or the mirror (record yourself).
- Check: did the brief survive questioning? The strongest briefs are the ones where the numbers and the structure do the talking.
- Next step: repeat the loop on a second solicitation — the pattern is now yours.
If you're a professional age 50+ (the Ignition Legacy Track)
The same doctrine, through the legacy sequence's lens (M1–M9 from the align map): your experience makes the doctrine read fast, so spend your hours on the practice and the artifacts. Weeks 1–2 map to M2 (Contract Mastery) and M3 (ORBITAL); weeks 3–5 to M4 (Proposal Writing) and M5 (PWIN & Dream Score); week 7's capstone is your M9 (Legacy Builder) proof. The onboarding guide has your placement.