Managing Collaboration Throughout the Acquisition Process: A Project Management Perspective
Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at 03:34PM 
I’ve been researching how to measure the impact of improved collaboration on Federal procurement processes, starting with development of a “concept map” that organizes the major issues.
Recently I had the good fortune to interview Mike Del-Colle, Accenture’s Senior Manager, Federal Contract Policy Compliance. I met Dell-Colle earlier this year at a meeting of the ACT/IAC Acquisition SIG and he graciously agreed to be interviewed. He made several very important points during our conversation that I wanted to report.
Are you improving or changing existing processes?
First, Del-Colle says that it makes a big difference whether you are using collaboration and communication technologies to improve existing processes or to change existing processes. The example he gave concerned the process formalities surrounding large DoD based procurements (and for some large NASA and DoE procurements). Much research and documentation goes into an initial assessment of the market for certain types of products and services. This market research phase, according to Mike, is an example where using documented communications and messages associated with use of collaboration and networking technologies would help support and even improve an existing process.
This certainly makes sense to me. How you measure “doing things better” and “doing things differently” often differ. For example, the former suggests process metrics as being important while the latter suggests outcome metrics as being more important; I’ve tried to capture both of these in the model.
Collaboration extends throughout contract management
Another point made by Del-Colle was that the use of collaborative systems for procurement management extends beyond contract award and extends into contact management. The sharing of information, the working to common goals, and the allocation of work across different teams doesn’t stop when the contract is awarded. These processes all must continue, albeit in modified form.
Yes, this does mean that relationships do change when, for example, responsibility for a contract on the vendor side shifts from a capture team to a delivery team. This is all the more reason, I believe, that sharing of information is critical so that the learning that about customer requirements and operational realities that emerges during proposal, award, and negotiations stages doesn’t get lost when the work moves from marketing to operations.
Procurement and Project Management
The points made by Del-Colle during our interview won’t be a surprise to experienced project managers since the importance of collaboration and information sharing has been long recognized as essential for successful project outcomes. In fact, some experts have explicitly connected project management and contract management; an example is shown in the presentation Procurement Project and Program Alignment by Michael Bevis, Competency and Certification Manager, Federal Acquisition Institute. Bevis devotes significant detail to discussing stakeholder communications and their importance to procurement processes.
This is similar to my own discussions of the role social media and social networking can play in project management; for an example see How Can Collaboration Systems and Social Media Complement Agile Project Management?
Practical questions
Once of the issues raised by the need for collaboration and information sharing across organisational and system boundaries is the impact on technology support. Telephone, email, and instant messaging are usually available to provide “plain vanilla” communication and collaboration frameworks. One question is how to move beyond these tools to collaborating and sharing in realtime when different groups use different collaboration tools. What if, for example, one groups uses SharePoint, another uses Jive, and a third uses a remotely hosted tool like Ning or Groupsite? Do you force everyone to use the same tool? Do you opt for lowest-common-denominator interfaces to allow for data and document sharing across systems? Or do you allow everyone to use the tools they feel comfortable with and provide, as unobtrusively as possible, administrative support to facilitate interfaces and data exchange between different systems?
These are tough questions and are typical of why I’m trying to look objectively at the contribution collaboration can make to acquisition processes.
Copyright (c) 2010 by Dennis D. McDonald
Reader Comments (2)
It appears that you've traveled across too many interesting insight here. It's almost as if you need a set of entries to cover these delectable ideas.
Let me follow a couple of paths.
Process and Collaboration (Part 1)
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"Communications Management" is a key element of project management. Often the key failure factor. Collaborative technologies helps to create a communications environment.
Process and Collaboration (Part 2)
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The pendulum needs to swing the other way. There are diminishing returns to business process management. Collaboration is orthogonal to process. "We have ways to make you collaborate" - " Now you must collaborate." Process can get into the way of collaboration. Collaboration assists agility. So, we need to consider the intersection between process and collaboration. How collaboration can change process. How collaboration can add insight to project management independent of process.
Collaboration and Procurement
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Dennis, you are scratching the surface. There is so much added value from collaboration, here's a quick top 10:
1) Creating proposal measures
2) Experience with vendors (assessment based on input from users)
3) Proposal assessment
4) Acceptance testing
5) Lesson learned in the procurement process
6) Managing vendor questions
7) Handling vendor disputes
8) Transparency in the process: citizens and civil society evaluating vendors, ;possible corruption, improving processes (intersection with process)
9) Vendor catalogs
10) Managing contract provisions
Collaboration and Risk Management
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Vendors take risks with complex procurements. The risk assessment from the proposal process help vendors to determine negotiating positions and begin developing solutions prior to winning proposals.
Collaboration and Outcomes
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Collaboration technology is not directly tied to outcomes. Governments identify objectives. These objectives are compared with results using output and outcome measurements. But there is a problem of unintended consequences. A procurement might achieve explicit outcomes, as identified in the procurement process, but might be effectively bad. (And vice versa). Government organizations might persist in making bad decisions based on using the wrong measurements. Collaboration enables those affected to comment about the real results, provide assessments and suggest better measurements.
Process and Collaboration (Part 3)
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Yes, collaboration can help improve process. Lessons-learned. Better ideas.
1. Does collaboration lengthen or shorten the procurement process?
2. Is shortening the procurement process a good thing or a bad thing?
3. Why do people resist using new tools to help them communicate?
4. Does collaboration facilitate the sharing of good ideas as well as bad ideas?
Thank you for the contribution! - Dennis