MEASURE WHAT MATTERS
Secretary of the Army for Procurement worked in concert to develop a mecha- nism through the Business Intelligence module in VCE that captured bridge information. Tese lagging metric VCE reports, which recorded what had already happened, allowed subordinate organiza- tions like the 418th CSB to create leading metrics to improve organizational goals.
FINDING THE BALANCE
The 418th CSB wanted to balance the tasks associated with stakeholder engagement and contract compliance-oriented tasks. Better engagement with customers meant replacing outdated manual processes with the automated VCE tool. (Image by Getty Images/NiseriN)
program to measure how effective both customers and contracting professionals were at integrating their efforts in VCE.
Up until this point, the 418th CSB received customer requirements piece- meal through email and a point-to-point transmittal of only the purchase request from the customer’s accounting system to the contract writing system. VCE tied these piecemeal messages together through its platform, where both customer and contracting could virtually plan acquisi- tions and track key milestone events.
LATE ACQUISITION PLANNING A 2016 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report titled “Sole Source Contracting: Defining and Tracking Bridge Contracts Would Help Agencies Manage Teir Use,” found that of the 73
delays in bridge contracts reviewed, 62 resulted from late acquisition planning documents and source selections. Te report further noted that “bridge contracts occur when a delay in the acquisition process prevents the award of a compet- itive follow-on contract until after the contract in place is due to expire.”
Similar to the GAO scope, the 418th CSB, from fiscal year 2018 to the current fiscal year, found that 31 of 62 bridge contracts were linked to late acquisition planning documents and source selection delays. Determining the number of bridges was possible only because of the VCE system. Beginning in October 2017, Army contracting activities could track both the number of and reasons for bridging contracts because the Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems and the Office of the Deputy Assistant
Leading metrics measure events before completion and drive the behavior required to improve organizational goals. In other words, leading measures improve lagging organizational goal metrics. (See Figure 3, Page 105.) Te 418th CSB created two leading metrics that were sent out to the workforce each week. Both tracked whether the customer and contract- ing professional did their part in using the VCE customer involvement tools. As Figure 3 details, the 418th CSB far exceeded the rest of the Army in meeting customer involvement goals. By measur- ing what matters—early and integrated planning with our requiring activity part- ners—the 418th CSB identified delays in the acquisition process that could trigger a bridging action.
An improvement in stakeholder
engagement during the requirements planning phase would translate to an improvement in reducing bridge contracts a bridging action.
102 Army AL&T Magazine Summer 2020
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