“The proposal is complex due to the customer’s acquisition strategy and our team of multiple primes and internal lines of businesses. Jeannie S. did an outstanding job keeping the team focused on internal artifacts required to meet an aggressive schedule. She established schedules, setup proposal milestones and helped develop artifacts in addition to pushing internal and external coordination. Jeannie left

The index uses trusted government data and refined algorithms from over 40 years of assisting companies pursue and win government contracts.

“This is an absolute *AMAZING* accomplishment to achieve *first time quality approval* of SDRLs on the month we cut over from a manual process to the EVM Deltek Cobra tool. Not only did we complete the “90 day get well plan” objectives but we also achieved *first time quality* of the SDRLs. I want to thank you all for your

“Luis E., thank you so much for investing your expertise in our team. I have received thanks and other positive feedback from people you interacted with over the last three weeks. I’ve also received inquiries from other adjacent organizations who have heard what we have done and would like to do the same. I greatly appreciate your written feedback. We’ll

“Seriously, finding amazing multimedia talent has been the bane of my professional existence. You two [Luis E. and Carolina] are stuck with me moving forward because I will want to work with you again. Not only was Carolina damn good at what she does, but she was a pleasure to partner with.”

“[Chris J.,] thanks again for the great [proposal development] training this week…and your flexibility. I’m going to [say] how much I appreciate the training and your approach. The group felt very comfortable with you and the impromptu topics and sidebars made this new knowledge real for our group. Great work, thanks again!”

This book provides the guidance and templates you need to better manage the sales pipeline and more accurately forecast revenues.

A reference for all who are tasked to write or contribute to the development of proposals to win more business for their company

This guide defines the nine principles essential to successful solution baseline development, a critical step to delivering a winning proposal

From our Program Lifecycle Body of Knowledge series, nine principles of developing winning proposals that have passed the test of time

From our Program Lifecycle Body of Knowledge series, a guide to using the SMA process to create winning proposals

From our Program Lifecycle Body of Knowledge series, a structured guide to developing the program architecture early in the proposal process

We challenged the core assumptions of our business operations and reinvented the concept of a professional services firm.

A guide to the winning process for the world’s largest program from the SMA Program Lifecycle Body of Knowledge series

“A big CONGRATULATIONS and Thank You for the support on the win! This couldn’t have been accomplished without you, and it’s been a privilege to work with y’all. Thank you for the guidance, for all of the long hours worked, for the training, collaboration, sprints, and for everything you did to submit the WINNING response! We look forward to future

“Congratulations for another win for SMA. Our relationship with your team is instrumental in our success current and future. Thank you!”

“Thanks Lee E., and I didn’t realize yesterday was going to be your last day. It was a pleasure working with you and thank you for all your efforts working [our two proposals], you ROCK Lee!!!!”

“Lee E. has been invaluable at turning our engineering concepts into polished diagrams. He has been responsive in getting the last minute changes in place.”

“Al W., a big Thank You to you and the team. I really do not think we could have gotten there with such a great package without you. I really appreciate everything you brought to the proposal, including your sense of humor.”

“Rick T. is close if not on the top of the list of planners that embody the aptitude & drive needed to excel in planning. We have appreciated Rick’s support and look forward to having Rick join us again down the line. Lucas T. has also been a top asset was the trail-blazer in so many respects. When I want to

“Paul S. fully understood everything about this effort, referred the right stuff to others, and answered the appropriate things yourself. You’d be surprised how few people actually do that well. It adds confidence to management that this team, and therefore this bid, is under control and in good hands.”

“I got a lessons learned summary from Brian S. this week, showing not only his expertise in graphics and proposal preparation, but in the training and quality of the people SMA has. I will continue to suggest SMA help on major proposals…”

“Melissa W. is a valued member of my team. She is professional, determined, proactive and creative with her project management assignments. I am able to rely on her projects being well-managed and know that I will only be engaged when needed. Melissa handles her team well, her project management duties well and is an excellent communicator. She escalates effectively, and

“Garrett C. is great! I am very happy with the support, guidance, and counsel from him, makes a big difference for us and our proposal. Thank you very much and please let him know we couldn’t be happier he is here!”

On Wednesday, 6 July 2017, an SMA client hosted an event in honor of Steve H.’s 17 years of continuous support to [one of their major programs]. We believe Steve’s 17 years is an SMA record for continuous deployment to a client. The client cited Steve’s ability to “make a positive impact” on all of his assignments on [that program].

“Greg S. is working out very well. So far, he has shown that he has exactly the background and skills that we need. He is also a delight to work with.”

“In the year Liz C. has been here, she has earned the respect of everyone for her diligence, hard work and pleasant personality. Her boss relies on her as much or more than any of our employees because she always gets the job done with little need for supervision. She is always ready to help out and has covered for

Robert D. and Brian S. were commended for their work with a new client pursuing a strategic opportunity. They did an outstanding job of leading the proposal effort. The government recently announced that the client won the competition, which will grow the company in a big way. [The client’s] owners praised Robert and Brian’s dedication to getting them a WIN. They

“I just wanted to share that [we] think Lisa N. is awesome. We were talking about how relaxed we feel, and how collaborative we’re all becoming. We aren’t afraid to ask questions anymore or share ideas. [She] makes us feel valued and that our group is really becoming whole. [She’s] doing a great job as our lead and are just

“I just want once again to reiterate how much I like working with Lucas T. He is professional, fast, straight to the point, and understands the program. He also provides the team with different view options to look at the data. It is benefiting both the team and leadership. I appreciate his help and support.”

“Tim C. did a fantastic job of taking the previous schedule, and completely redoing it such that it finally made sense and was in sync with the schedule from my subcontractor. Tim attacked the effort with enthusiasm and software tool knowledge unlike any I had received from the combined efforts of all previous planners that had attempted to create a

“I’d like to pile the compliments on. This was a complicated deal that could have significant long-term benefit. …Rod O., you continue to impress me with your ability to lead us all to an exemplary product. The dedication and can-do attitude of all of you who invested so much time on this made it not only a success but even

“The IMS section of the PMR continues be a shining example of how far we have improved in this area since the start of the contract—this is directly attributable to thought leadership and diligence to the details by Chelley H. and Bryan A. Today during the PMR hot wash [there were] some great ‘well-dones’ to the team—but I want you

“I want to extend my thanks to the SMA graphics folks (Lori C. and Jeannie W.) for their tireless support on the proposal. Typically, proposals are a major impact on my team resulting [in] complete disruption to our normal workflow while forcing my team to work many weekends. In fact, their great work has reduced that significantly. [The proposal] graphics

“Just wanted to take a moment and thank Shane T. for all his efforts on our project. It’s been great to have him back! It can be challenging work, with no shortage of twists and turns. And Shane handles it very well both with the client and with the team. Also, on the project economics side, he has really done

“[The customer] put a very nebulous task in front of us, and Shane T. took it by the horns and through a lot of [Excel] acumen, patience, and many meetings really delivered for [the customer]. It continues to be a pleasure working with Shane on the team, and I wanted to pass this glowing review of his performance along to

“Steve B., thank you for your efforts supporting us here. You have done fantastic work. When we get closer to the Final RFP (or release of a Draft RFP) on the proposal, we will be reaching back out to you to re-engage full-time.”

“I wanted to say thank you to Dick E. on so many levels! (1) for an awesome job on the templates and user guide—HUGE success!!! (2) for putting up with my crazy thoughts—no easy task. (3) for getting up oh-dark-early to share with our team—sorry! And most importantly for making me look good to my boss—he called me after and was tickled

“Jeffrey E. is doing an excellent job, without his expertise and guidance we would not be where we are. He has taught us many things but the most important fact he keeps reminding us: ‘the only thing that is fixed is the proposal delivery date.’”

“Tim C. has proven so valuable that we expect to have him here for the foreseeable future.”

“Liz C. exceeded my expectations and greatly enhanced the quality of our proposal. We could not have done it without her! She worked very well with the team and enhanced teamwork among its members. Our proposal was much better than would have been the case without Liz’s support. The final product had a look of professionalism and detail that would

“We truly appreciated the exceptional support that Jeffrey E. provided to our proposal effort. [He] went above and beyond the call of duty every step along the way, mentoring our authors to not only improve the product, but to improve their processes going forward here. Our proposal received high marks during color team reviews, and we could not have achieved

“Elisca S. has been doing an outstanding job. I gave her one of our toughest programs, one that was on the CEO’s watchlist, and she has made significant contributions to getting them ‘out of the red.’ I consider her one of the top planners in our product line and trust her with overseeing the training of a new hire. She

“I was recently copied on [the one year] anniversary of her [client] assignments. I had the good fortune of working with Eleni T. during her [program A] assignment and supporting my IPT CAM duties on the [program A] replan. I wanted to resonate on the professionalism, knowledge, and proficiency of her program planning and support, petitioning the recognition she deserves.

“I wanted to sing Elisca S.’s praises to you. She is an amazing asset to our team; she clearly knows her stuff when it comes to planning, she drives the team to get their tasks done and she holds the team accountable. She’s fantastic at pulling together who she needs to get the right answers and leads all of us

“I do want to express my sincere appreciation for Carol M.’s work with our team. We have no in-house experience in this area and she was incredibly patient with us, returning to first principles and being thorough and deliberate. I really enjoyed the experience and am grateful to both Carol and SMA.”

“…I wanted to express my appreciation for the work SMA provided. In particular, John N. provided strong leadership and worked collaboratively to address and resolve issues. John made himself available day and night seven days a week. His dedication was remarkable and the work he produced was of high quality. I really enjoyed working with John and hope to have

“…I wanted to express my appreciation for the work SMA provided. In particular, Jim G. was a stand out. He was the first to volunteer for assignments. He would finish the work quickly with high quality and then seek out new assignments to keep progress moving forward. Jim was a pleasure to work side-by-side with in developing our response. I

“Just wanted to let you know how pleased our bid team was with the support we received from Jeff S. on our Task Order responses. The concept of operations designs he provided for both projects were easy to understand yet complex enough to cover the SOW. Jeff was a pleasure to work with and is well liked and respected by

“Great job with your people: Lee E., Adish S., and Dave P. Great guys and we appreciate the guidance.”

Mike D. is implementing Earned Value Management at our client. On delivery of his first Program Performance Report, client responses included, “Hey Mike, superb work!”, “Mike, great work!”, and “Holy cow—this is incredible!”

“Dan M. has been a great help for us here…over the many months he has worked here. Dan has diligently and skillfully supported multiple program teams with accurate and up-to-date schedule performance assessments. Without his support, we would not have been able to satisfy critical program reporting requirements. Dan’s support and willingness to help is well recognized by myself and the entire

“Janet L. and Louise P. have been great assets to our team! Should the need arise for a Cost Analyst or Scheduler for my team I will definitely reach out to you because of the great support SMA has provided.”

“Roger R. hit the ground running and is doing a great job. I would hire him again.”

“For the second half of 2019, Eleni T. has provided planner support for our project team. She quickly came up to speed to support the team and collaborated in multiple ways. Her major accomplishments include using Critical Chain to shorten schedule delays, creating customized Integrated Master Schedules and Master Phasing Schedules for high visibility tasks and for understanding our long-term

“First and foremost, Carla W.’s demeanor makes her a joy to work with. In a very short time Carla forged friendships and professional alliances with team members that allowed her to be much more effective in getting the job done. Her work products with the IMS and multiple other tracking tools allowed us to keep track and stay on top

“Holly H., thank you very much for all the support that you provided for this. We certainly could not have done it without you. On behalf of the entire team please receive our gratitude and appreciation.”

“We would be dead in the water without Mike’s skillset and stellar performance pushing us in the right direction. In my opinion, Mike D. operated far outside of his requirements to help our team succeed; he was truly a team player. I’ve never seen anything like it! At the end of the day, if I can have one person on

“I have nothing but the highest praise for all you did to get us to where we are, Ralphine I. Please put me down as a fan and a reference any time you need it!”

“Brian S. and Robert D. just completed their work yesterday and did a great job getting us to final! Very long days for Brian, and he was key contributor to our electronic and print ‘book check’ submission success. Thank you for SMA’s support on this bid!”

“I think this virtual experience worked well for us. Rod O. was very well capable of handling virtual meetings as well as SharePoint for configuration management. Overhead support from Peter S. and Jeni P. made it even smoother. Thanks to entire SMA team.”

“Just a short note to thank you for bringing Lee E. to us. He is a seasoned professional, anticipating my needs and delivering what I need, when I need it. His experience with USG proposal requests makes us working together easy. Lee’s attitude of being a team player is the grease to keep things running smooth. Since I’m in proposal

“I just wanted to reach out and let you know Simon D. has been a pleasure to work with and we are making good progress.”

“We conducted our Technical Volume Red Team last Friday and received excellent comments from the reviewers. Lee E. has been a tremendous asset, working with me over the weekend to revise graphics and to re-apply formatting styles to produce a clean baseline document.”

“Marc W., Debbie D., and Bill H., we are successfully under contract for the DARPA program. Your help in the proposal last year was instrumental for this success! Thank you again! I only regret that I had to wait this long to share this news!”

“I can’t thank you all enough for being so gracious and including Luke A. in your organization at SMA [as a summer intern]. He really appreciated being involved with the team and feels a strong sense of allegiance to the team. I asked if he wanted an internship over the year with [our family company]. He promptly replied, “No Dad,

“Betty G., Steve H., and Alan M., …I wanted to personally thank this team for your dedication, professionalism and stick-to-it-ness as you persevered in preparing and delivering the proposal. For sure, there is more to go, but your tireless efforts are much appreciated and foundational in carrying the program forward. Thank you for carrying our water. All the best and

“Elisca S. joined the team in April/May 2020 and has done an outstanding job. We just received our CPAR rating from US Air Force for the program and Scheduling has improved from Satisfactory to Very Good rating. I appreciate her help and dedication to the team and would like to share this good news with you. She always goes above

“We couldn’t have won this award without Danny L.  He was a key member of the team, and is always a pleasure to work with.”

“In July we received  a formal CPAR from our USAF customer and the program received the highest grade of any program supporting USAF contract efforts in the company!  In 5 out of the 7 categories we received the highest rating of Exceptional!  I made sure the entire team and their mangers were aware of this achievement and I wanted to

“Lee M. just finished the first major task order proposal and it was lucky that he was transferred from capture to proposals last month. The customer is in a hurry to obligate money and they gave the contractors 11 days to respond with 150 pages and pricing for $50 million. Lee billed almost 200 hours during the past 11 days

“Lee M. served as our Proposal Manager.  And while Lee is a subcontractor he did not operate that way.  He was committed to the successful development of our proposal and…put in countless hours to ensure that our proposal was of high quality and compliant.”

“Congratulations! We won one of the contracts for program. Thank you for your support in getting this pursuit into the ‘win’ column. Lee E.—your track record remains intact!’

“This has turned out to be the longest and hardest fought campaign…yet.  I would like to mention the stellar work by Alan M. to lead the proposal writing and his efforts to ensure it was a first class submission.”

“As COVID-19 home working procedures were enacted, the proposal team took on the challenge of running a complex, multi-business unit bid entirely remotely. All worked under tight deadlines, the proposal team delivered a high quality proposal on time and within budget to the customer.” (SMA Associate Jolyne T. provided production & graphics support to this effort.)

“I wanted to send a note of appreciation to Brian S. He is an amazing professional to work with. He was able to deal with our proposal inputs with changes and some within the 2-hour window of delivery.”

“Noel J. and Terry T., thanks so much for your assistance on this killer proposal. To say we could not have submitted without your help is an understatement. We submitted on Sunday with 5 minutes to spare and the orals went well. And now we wait.”

“James E. successfully supported transition from the current Project Control Analyst (PCA) to become the new singular PCA for a $100M R&D full EV program. His support included managing monthly EV deliverables both to the PMO and the government customer, closeout of a major subcontractor, and working with the customer to determine desktop IBR criteria and movement toward implementing initiating

“Joe B. We got this beast over the line! It was a pleasure and an honor to work with a true professional like you. Your calm demeanor, willful conduct of activities and tireless effort enabled us to collectively get there. Thanks for being a true partner in this effort and I wish you what promises to be a very relaxing

“Our proposal was submitted at 12:07 pm today!!!!!!!!!!!! Ralphine I. and Al W., thank you for all your advice, hard work, guidance, and hand holding!! You are true professionals and I really appreciate your support and look forward to working with you as we move forward.”

“Just wanted to touch base and let you know that we were genuinely pleased with the quality of the work that your team did for us recently. It was well done… thank you. Two things stand out: First, the quality of the CA was very high—as much as we really appreciated the great detail data, we also appreciated the solid, actionable

Should the Program Planning & Control (PP&C) function report into your Finance or Program Management department?

How do you implement an Earned Value Management System (EVMS) in an Agile environment?

A resource loaded IMS integrated with the EVMS and Risk Register are key elements of an effective PP&C system that provides early warning to issues and insights into the drivers of the cost/schedule/technical trends.

Contractors that do not have a validated EVMS present more risk to the buying agency. If you are bidding to win $50M+ programs, implementation of an EVMS should be integral to your win strategy.

Most PP&C disciplines are implemented for compliance providing little to no value to the technical team. For PP&C to enhance productivity, the information provided must be actionable.

Third party reviews minimize the impact on your customer, reduce the cost of rework, and minimize the impact on the technical team (CAMs and PMs).

Designing an EVMS solely for external reporting and compliance is one of the most common and expensive EVMS implementation mistakes.

Implementing a PP&C discipline that produces actionable information and early warning to negative trends assists the program team to deliver on time and on cost with quality.

The stress and cost of preparing for milestone reviews persists to this day in spite of numerous improvements in processes and execution discipline. Modern techniques have fundamentally changed design and development methods. These techniques can result in artifacts needed for customer milestone reviews as contemporaneous products of the design process.

Environments that implement cost and schedule as separate functions in the organization create stovepipes resulting in rework, extended hours for staff, and late CDRLs. In these environments, more time is spent reconciling data rather than analyzing information. Program Planning & Control (PP&C) organizations with integrated cost/schedule capabilities can operate as much as 30% more efficiently.

You know your system is working when the project team and management use the information to make both day-to-day, and milestone decisions, not just keep score. Successful program planning and controls integrates cost and schedule principles with technical and other product components. Getting the level of detail right is one of the biggest challenge to effectively implementing IMS/EVMS for decision

Effective programmatics align project performance feedback cycles to the product development tempo and approach. Implementing projects with agile tools and methods provides early warning to program challenges.

Dynamics around budgets, conflicts/threats, and competitors make long-term strategy development more challenging than ever. Segmentation offers a useful way to think about the distinct parts of a business—not necessarily based on products or customers, but on attributes such as nature of responsibility, frequency of competition, and technology domain. Long-term strategies appropriate for each of the segments that the division participates

Competitive and market pressures are changing the economics of historically strong businesses. Our approach is to determine root causes of underperformance by comparing the current business to customer needs and competitors’ behaviors. Insights into misalignment with market demands will lead to options for change—for example, business model transformation, targeted investment in product development, cost reduction initiatives, etc. Conditions for business

The government’s recent emphasis on competition creates an increased threat to company franchises and ability to leverage platform incumbency. An effective way to protect markets is to anticipate competitors’ approaches and then design counter-strategies. We apply our structured choices methodology for win strategy development to evaluate and reverse engineer likely baseline strategies for each competitor, and alternatives. We then compare

Often excitement is created by a technical breakthrough or news about growth in another company’s business, but these alone do not warrant strategic moves. However, sustainable growth platforms are developed with an integrated outside-in (areas of external demand) and inside-out (areas of distinctive company assets and capabilities) analysis. We characterize market opportunity areas based on trends in end-user needs, technology

Unfavorable RFP changes are most troubling because they indicate a disconnect with the customer. If there are RFP changes, it is important to conduct a fast cycle assessment of possible competitive strategies. Develop new alternatives and assess impact of customer changes and anticipated competitor responses to determine the strongest strategy based on evolving conditions. Tactical moves are then determined based

Regulation and process have made the government customer historically unattractive to commercial companies. Partnerships with traditional government contractors is one way to navigate the system, and new government efforts to reach out to innovative commercial firms might further facilitate adoption of commercial offerings. There are also occasional opportunities when the government may prefer a commercial offering because it offers better

The technology-push approach of finding new applications for existing products and capabilities is extraordinarily difficult. Consider a market-pull perspective by conducting research and working with marketplace incumbents to characterize particular segments and the outstanding unmet needs. This allows you work backwards to identify relevant capabilities to address market needs.