A Practical Guide to Earned Value Project Management, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 14

 

Government Contracts

“There are only two phases to a big military program: Too early to tell and too late to stop.”

— Ernest Fitzgerald

The bureaucracy of the U.S. federal government is notoriously challenging. James Stevenson used Fitzgerald’s First Law of Program Management, quoted above, in an earlier book (Stevenson 1993, 305) and recently told us Fitzgerald had used it in one of their conversations.

Although there is far too much information about government contracts to cover in this chapter, we have two primary purposes in presenting it. The first is an attempt to help you through the maze by looking at some helpful websites and publications. Although the various federal departments and agencies have slightly different approaches ...