DVP Proposal Process

Introduction

At Blackbox, our vision is to transform the world by solving problems central to the human condition, primarily the idea of “work” and our place in it. To enable the Future of Work, our Blackbox Operating System must support the efficient creation and costing of work proposals to replace outdated, more subjective, traditional methods. The scope of a proposal can be documented as a Work Breakdown Structure containing one or more deliverables. For complex proposals, we typically determine the total cost using bottom up estimates.

We have invented the Deliverable Value Points (DVPs), which we use as our bottom up estimates. They will be explained here in detail. Our name for a work proposal is DVP Proposal, as it is based on those DVP estimates.

We use DVP Proposals in the following scenarios:

• Internal-facing vs. external (client) work
• Time and Material (T&M) vs. Fixed Price work
• Ongoing work, living wage, retainer-based work
• Summary Proposal (a proposal for the work to create a proposal)
• Key Business Decision and the associated work to evaluate and determine the best solution

In other words, DVP Proposals represent a Statement of Work (SOW) for internal and external projects, or Key Business Decisions.

This process is optimized for a decentralized environment.

DVP explained

The DVP is a way to accurately value a deliverable, independent of who performs the work. It considers the fair market rate for a required skill type and skill level excluding the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA), the amount of work (Effort), and a Tuning Factor allowing to adjust for things like deliverable attractiveness, and urgency.

DVP does not account for the final actual quality outcome and actual Cost of Living, however takes into consideration the weighted, expected outcome (COLA_E and Q_E) so that it can be used as a component to calculate the total expected cost of a proposal.

At Blackbox, deliverables represent significant work outcomes such as managing a project, making a Key Business Decision, implementing code, or designing a set of graphics. Deliverables can also represent ongoing work over a period of time, such as time spent by Operations resources to onboard new individuals. They should be defined at a level where they can be owned by a single individual. Despite that, the Blackbox OS allows subcontracting a part of a deliverable to someone else.

To illustrate the Skill Multiplier S find the below illustration:

Skill Levels 1 through 4 roughly translate to Novice, Intermediate, Expert, Guru.

For example, the DVP for a task requiring the “Consulting-AI Skill” at expert level 3 for a total of 50 hours would be: 50 * 1.70 = 85 DVP. As a side note, 85 DVP will translate into FIAT currency based on the Quality and COLA factors. For example, if someone did the work with a COLA Factor of 1.3 (San Francisco, CA, USA) and a Quality Factor (determined through Proof of Value) of 1.0, the FIAT currency amount would be (85 * $US100 * 1.3)
$US 11,050 . Assuming a BBOS Token price of $US 0.16, the associated amount of BBOS Tokens paid out would be BBOS 69,063.

From Proposal to Vote

To illustrate the process, let us assume we are making a proposal for a client project. The following steps are performed to determine the DVPs associated with each deliverable:

1. The Sales Lead and Sales Engineer, with help from others as needed, put together the initial SOW including a list of all required deliverables describing the full scope of work. They might or might not estimate deliverables.
2. Experts review deliverables that match their expertise, as illustrated in the graphic below as entries with the Type “estimate”. At a minimum, two experts will independently review each deliverable for a token reward. They will figure out the difficulty, novelty, required skill type and level, risk, and effort of each deliverable. When an expert believes that the proposal is missing information or unclear, they ask for changes to the SOW until it is unambiguous, or reject the proposal. The combined input of all experts is also used to assess the overall risk and viability of a proposal.
3. Once the SOW is finalized and all experts have submitted estimates, one of the following occurs for each deliverable:
   — If all expert estimates are within an acceptable range, a weighted average (based on reputation) of the estimates are calculated and the proposal automatically moves to the Vote stage
   — If estimates differ significantly, experts have a time-synchronized discussion to determine the root cause of the differences, and to resolve them.
4. Once experts have consensus on all deliverables, the proposal is ready for a vote. At this point, any Blackbox Participant, internal or external, can vote. However, certain topic stewards (e.g. Legal, HR, Technology) are required to vote depending on the nature of the proposal.

To be efficient, DVP Proposals can be “canned”, i.e. they can have pre-approved content. For example, the process of creating a DVP Proposal to perform an AI Workshop might take less than 30 minutes of combined total effort.

Conclusion

Deliverable Value Point Proposals represent a powerful tool to independently estimate and validate a proposal, centered on expert consensus and transparency. It clearly sets expectations ensuring both proposers and contributors are aligned from project creation to completion. The simple act of aligning intention and value ahead of time reduces errors from duplicate work and mismatched objectives, both within and across organizations, and leads to more desirable financial outcomes. As it is optimized for a decentralized environment, it allows reaching all of the most relevant experts to provide feedback, which is difficult or impossible in traditional environments. A DVP based proposal enables diverse groups to agree on the intended result, facilitated by expert consensus on the definition of value and expectations for the participants involved. An approved proposal establishes an objective agreement for participants and voters to refer to during the Proof of Value (PoV) stage, which will be covered in another posting.

The following table shows some of the advantages of the DVP Proposal compared to typical traditional methods:

If you would like to read more about the Future of Work, please take a look at our White Paper!