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Government Leader home > November 2005 issue
November 2005; Vol. 1 No. 4
DON’T FORGET MANAGEMENT: Trust industry to innovate, but it’s your job to make sure the program stays on track
By Emory Miller
If you’ve been paying attention for the last couple of years, you’ve probably noticed that there’s something going on in acquisition. It used to be (especially before the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996) that the government assumed it knew best, defining both the requirements and the solution in a request for proposals. Industry was often left shaking its collective head, knowing the best solution wasn’t on the table and knowing the litany of contract modifications it would take to “fix” the contract and the solution after award.
Today, we’re smarter. Program officials and contracting officers are getting better at putting their problems on the table and letting industry come up with the solutions instead of trying to come up with the technical answers on their own. Certainly, this is a positive trend. Agencies are beginning to trust the integrators and niche technology companies to do what they do best: Innovate against challenging problems.
Preparing for challenges. As the government loosens the reins on technical challenges, though, I have a caution: Don’t forget management. Trust the integrator to solve your technical problem. That’s what they do best. But don’t abdicate your responsibility to see that the program gets managed well.
You may say, “What do you mean? Look at our new guidelines. We have a program manager on every major initiative.” That might be true, but the management challenge is bigger than one person can handle on many major government programs.
Let’s say your program spans five years and is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Keeping that program on track is a major management challenge. Where are those resources coming from? Look around you. Do you have the excess management capacity in your organization to handle that on a part-time basis?
The answer most agencies come up with is a resounding “no.” So what’s the solution? The conventional wisdom says to trust the management of the program to your integrator. OK, let’s consider that scenario.
I think we’re all aware of major programs that have gone woefully astray—over budget, out of scope, way past the schedule. What happened in the management of those programs? In many situations, the company implementing the technical solution knows early in the process that there are problems. Put yourself in their shoes, though. When problems first emerge, they seem small. From the integrator’s perspective, they’re easily solved. As time goes on, they get a little worse and a little worse, but each small additional delay or cost impact seems like it could be made up later in the project. You don’t want to alarm your customer; you figure you’ll take care of everything before it’s a real issue.
Well, we all know how that situation turns out. Once you’re on the slippery slope, it’s tough to get off. Eventually, the problems are so significant that there’s no hiding them. You have to admit that the program is way over budget or way beyond schedule. And at that point, what can the government do? Changing the solution at that point usually isn’t an option, so the choices are tough.
This isn’t a new story. We’ve seen it in the pages of newspapers and magazines over and over again. But what’s to be done about it? There is an answer: Keep program management separate from technology solutions.
Whether program management is handled by seasoned government managers or by outside experts, it should remain accountable directly to the government and not to the implementing industry partner.
In order to be effective, a program management office needs a clear view of what is happening within the program, plus the ability to alert program sponsors to issues early and determine scope changes or adjustments as soon as possible. They need to be part of the executive decision-making process that can take in the risks and understand the challenges every step of the way. And they need to be advocates for the ultimate customer—the government and the citizens.
Will splitting program management from technical integration fix every flawed program? Probably not. But what gives a better chance of success: management as a focused effort by experts advocating for the customer ... or management as an afterthought with an incentive to hide issues? Look around you and judge for yourself. I think you’ll come to the same conclusion I have.
Emory Miller is senior vice president for government affairs at Robbins-Gioia LLC of Alexandria, Va. He served 36 years in the federal government, acquiring IT goods and services, coordinating policy and educating the professional workforce.
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| "In order to be effective, a program management office needs a clear view of what is happening within the program..." — Emory Miller |
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