Imagine working in a high stress environment where contract support for a mission critical program may expire at the end of the month and there is no backup plan. Your organization had plans to re-compete the contract earlier in the fiscal year, but the procurement package or requisition was not developed on time. Several documents …
Continue reading “Procurement: Meeting the PALT in Four Simple Steps”
Integrity just completed relocation to an expanded new headquarters this week, custom-built to meet the needs and goals of the business in 2015 and beyond. Like any major project, it involved complex planning, thousands of individual decisions, and frequent deadlines that had to be met to move on to the next phase, and ultimately project …
Continue reading “Milestone Decisions: Checkpoints for Acquisition Success”
Change can be good when it brings innovative ideas and fresh enthusiasm, including in government contracting. But if not handled correctly, change can lead to bumps in the road or unexpected slowdowns. There are ways to smooth the path, however, during a handover of responsibilities. They involve focusing on both the transition of the contract …
You landed on a great project team and were asked to prepare the Project Management Plan. Even though you’ve executed or implemented project management plans, you never actually prepared a project management plan. Where do you start? What elements belong in the project management plan? Let’s start with some basics. Is a “project management plan” …
What emerging or continuing trends will dominate the next 12 months or more in federal acquisition and program management? Our Integrity experts each forecast one top trend for 2015 – cybersecurity, workforce development, requirements development, contracts standardization & IT acquisition innovation. Let’s begin with an issue once again in the news this week – how to …
Continue reading “2015 Trend Forecast – Acquisition and Program Management”
It’s the time of year when many of us take stock of the last 12 months and vow to improve next year. We will be smarter, more organized, perhaps even try something new. The numerous Integrity Matters articles written by our on-the-ground experts in 2014 provide a leg up for the New Year. They contain …
Continue reading “Acquisition and Program Management Tools for 2015”
As a Program Manager, have you noticed a trend that your program keeps on repeating the same lessons learned or mistakes? As a program, when completing a yearly reporting requirement, do you hear yourself stating to your staff that we did not complete x, y, or z in order to fulfill our operational requirements? If …
Cybersecurity has been one of the fastest growing sectors in the federal government over recent years, with round-the-clock threats in an online world. In fact, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in June that “the number of cyber incidents reported by federal agencies increased in fiscal year 2013 significantly over the prior three years,” and …
Continue reading “Are You Making the Business Case for Federal Cybersecurity?”
Does this sound familiar? Mission and business owners define their requirements, “throw them over the fence”, and then the contracting and contractor community conduct activities to obtain and deliver the contracted solutions. But what about rapid changes in technology, short development time frames, reduced budgets, or greater complexity? These risks in execution lead to schedule …
Continue reading “Use the “A” Team for Integrated Acquisition Planning”
Your team may have spent hours and hours considering the program management, risk management and quality assurance issues involved in letting a new government contract. But have you pulled the key information about how that contract will be managed into a single plan? A Contract Management Plan (CMP) is one of the primary tools the …
Continue reading “With A Great Contract Management Plan, The Sky is the Limit”
