Books published by Management Concepts, Inc

Improve Your Agency''s Performance Budgets and Accountability Reports Performance Budgeting: What Works, What Doesn’t is a must-have resource for government officials implementing performance budgeting within their organizations. The author examines performance budgets and accountability reports from a cross-section of federal agencies and offers an objective critique of both their form and content. Examples of the best—and the worst—federal performance budgeting efforts offer insights and lessons for agency officials charged with determining the best performance budgeting techniques to put into practice. Readers will benefit from reviewing examples of other organizations’ work and will learn how to use evaluation tools to apply performance budgeting techniques to their own organizations. Understand the evolution of performance budgeting and its inherent advantages Examine the performance budgets and results for eleven federal agencies Benchmark against the best agency submissions, and avoid the pitfalls of poor budgets and accountability reports Identify the attributes of good performance measures and learn how to develop them Bonus! Includes a CD-ROM with the latest performance and accountability reports for all 24 CFO agencies.

A Plain-English Guide to Government Writing Whether you’re in the public or private sector, good writing skills are critical to your success in the workplace. Plain Language in Government Writing: A Step-by-Step Guide shows you how to apply federal plain-language guidelines to every type of writing — from emails, memos, and letters to agency communications, technical procedures, and budget justification statements. Through numerous exercises as well as examples from a variety of federal and state agencies, this practical guide walks you step-by-step through every phase of the writing process, providing tips for improved clarity, conciseness, and completeness. This valuable reference will help you:Write for diverse audiences in reader-friendly, plain language Overcome writer’s block Gain confidence in your ability to write — and get results Make your writing visually appealing Prepare for briefings and presentations Recognize successful writing and identify what makes it effective A Plain-English Guide to Government Writing will enable you to express yourself more clearly and concisely, produce documents more efficiently, and work more effectively with others throughout the writing process.

Reduce risk and improve the overall performance of IT assets! Federal IT Capital Planning and Investment Control is the first book to provide a comprehensive look at the IT capital planning and investment control (CPIC) process. Written from a practitioner’s perspective, this book covers a range of topics designed to provide both strategic and operational perspectives on IT CPIC. From planning to evaluation, this valuable resource helps managers and analysts at all levels realize the full benefits of the CPIC process.•Explore the full range of IT investment principles and practices •Learn CPIC project management techniques including earned-value management, integrated baseline review, cost-benefit analysis, and risk-adjusted cost and schedule estimates•Identify strategies to improve how your organization manages its IT portfolio and selects, controls, and evaluates investments •Discover how to leverage scarce IT resources and align investments with program priorities •Benefit from the in-depth coverage—excellent for the experienced as well as those new to the CPIC process

Master the first and most critical step of the Performance-based Acquisition (PBA) process – the Performance Work Statement (PWS). Get an overview of PBA and an understanding of the questions that must be asked to ensure desired outcomes. What is really needed as an end deliverable? What is the real outcome that an RFP is seeking? By learning to ask the right questions, you’ll learn how to make the PWS into a truly valuable tool for success.

Get an overview of the legal underpinnings of the contracting process. Learn why things are done in certain ways. And become familiar with the constitutional, statutory, and regulatory laws behind the rule or practice. This ActionPack book will equip you with a deeper understanding of government contracting practices to inform all your contracting activities. Ideal for all levels of professionals from novices to senior managers.

Learn how to establish successful business relationships and winning contracts for both parties. Get a solid grounding in the acquisition process, learn the roles of key players, and discover the rules of the game. This practical book briefs you on key steps in contract formation, essential elements of a binding contract, principal objectives for buyers and sellers, and much, much more. Whether you’re forming a contract for the first or fiftieth time, you’ll improve your results with best practices and tools for success.

Many buyers and sellers focus their efforts on getting the contract - and don''t properly plan, staff, or supervise contract administration and closeout. This ActionPack book shows you how to prepare for the post-award phase so that you the maximize success of your contract. You''ll get a firm grounding in contract administration - plus practical tools to help you avoid delays and cost overruns and improve performance and customer satisfaction.

Pricing is at the heart of every deal in government or business – but figuring out the right approach isn’t easy. This ActionPack book gives you an overview of key estimating and pricing issues – and outlines a variety of approaches to cost estimating and pricing. Whether you’re an entry-level or experienced professional, you’ll learn invaluable new techniques for achieving the best pricing results.

Learn how you can apply this strategic method to boost flexibility and innovation in business arrangements. Find out how PBC is being used by government and industry leaders to motivate sellers to deliver products, services, and solutions that meet or exceed buyers’ requirements. Discover how to apply performance standards, metrics, and other incentives for superior results. Become familiar with current techniques such as the performance work statement (PWS), statement of objectives (SOO), quality assurance surveillance plan (QASP), and more.

Learn to use this proven-effective method to integrate cost, schedule, and technical performance. Get a briefing on essential terms, key objectives, benefits of EVM, best practices and how to implement them, regulations governing the use of EVM, and much, much more. If you’re new to EVM, you’ll get the basic understanding you need to apply techniques. If you’re already familiar with EVM, you’ll increase and strengthen your knowledge for greater success.

A ';back-to-basics' guide to government contract lawFinally! A plain-English presentation of the basic legal concepts of government contract law for professionals at any stage in their careers.Until now, anyone in the procurement field has had to trudge through dense and complex texts written in hard-to-follow ';legalese' in their quest to understand procurement law. With Understanding Government Contract Law, they finally have a source of clear and concise explanations of the legal principles involved in government contract law, written by an authority on the subject.Part I of the book focuses on the unique problems facing each of the parties to a government contract the contract officer and the contractor and offers insight to the many roles played by the contract officer in the procurement process. Part II describes why and how the government contract is different from commercial contracts. Part III explores the ins and outs of a government contract lawsuit.The author presents key legal principles of government contract law by:* Stating a legal principle* Specifying where in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) that principle is found* Offering the rationale, context, and any public policy behind the principle* Describing, with case law examples, situations where the government applied the law correctly and situations where the government came to that conclusion incorrectly

Today''s Best Performance Improvement Practices Tailored to Government Performance-Oriented Management: A Practical Guide for Government Agencies will help you make a smooth transition from a management philosophy that is reactive and task-oriented to one based on a vision of accomplishment. With this practical, authoritative, and comprehensive guidebook, you''ll have a tested framework and process for making the change to performance improvement. The method is based on the acclaimed Malcolm Baldrige Assessment Criteria for performance improvement, which are regarded as a national benchmark. Performance-Oriented Management will give you a solid understanding of the basics of performance improvement. With this must-have resource, you''ll: • Get a detailed method to position your organization for major change • Understand the benefits of performance-oriented, rather than task-oriented, management • Learn how to determine your destination (vision) and your starting point (assessment) • Discover why top management must initiate and drive the change • Learn why assessment and strategic planning are of paramount importance — not add-on programs for an already-overloaded workforce • Find out why it''s critical that planning drives the budget, rather than the budget driving planning. Develop a step-by-step, comprehensive, top-down method for implementing performance improvement

The Business of Government is your guide to a new breed of business planning that meshes private sector strategies with a methodology designed exclusively for the public sector. No other strategic planning guide offers this hands-on, public sector focus. The Business of Government provides guidance, tools, and real-world examples you can use right away to analyze where you stand and what specific steps are needed to take you to the "managing for results" platform that is the centerpiece of the Results Act of 1993 – and your springboard to a whole new level of performance. It explains how to initiate, manage, measure and sustain a remarkable transformation - an approach proven to produce a dramatic impact on public policy and service to the citizen. Plus, the book includes model documents ready to adapt for your own program, including an actual business plan, sample financials, and sample performance report. Learn how to define and deliver a new era of results as you: • Dramatically improve critical thinking and innovation • Develop a business strategy proven to work in government • Overcome implementation obstacles - including "old culture" • Align support organizations • Establish a senior management council • Oversee strategy implementation teams • Write annual performance reports explaining your results Profit from expert advice on applying today''s best "smart government" tools, including these: 1. Strategies: Transformational leadership strategies that address change-resistance, skills gaps and other challenges. 2. Gap analysis methodology: A proven model for assessing how your organization may have drifted from mission — and how to get back on track. 3. Tactics: Specific technology, human resource, and process solutions for adjusting and invigorating your programs. Case studies: Real-world "lessons learned" to help you apply the most successful solutions

Acquire the leadership skills that are the hallmark of the successful project manager! Project management is often defined by processes and methodology, but projects are accomplished by people. Successfully leading those people is the core of a project manager's job. Even the seasoned project manager will encounter situations that present unique leadership challenges. Bernardo Tirado offers a clear path to help develop leadership skills within the project management framework. Using a hands-on, practical approach, he presents a model for taking any project manager's leadership skills to the next level. His model focuses on techniques to develop and apply three areas of awareness—self-awareness, awareness of team dynamics, and organizational or "political” awareness. The first three parts of the book provide tools for understanding and influencing behavior and the last part brings the three types of awareness together in a case study. Exercises throughout make the book interactive and offer a continual assessment of the reader's progress.

For both experienced and new project managers, Integrated Cost and Schedule Control in Project Management provides clear explanations of crucial cost and scheduling procedures.

Providing today's public administrators with the skills to deal with complex ethical problems, make decisions with greater self-assurance and perform their duties in the most ethically justifiable manner, Practical Ethics in Public Administration is an invaluable guide to applying sound ethical theories to everyday situations.

Zero in on the answers to your IT project management questions With constrained schedules and anxious stakeholders eager for results, the typical IT project team doesn’t have the luxury of wading through lengthy tomes to find solutions. The IT Project Management Answer Book guides you to the specific answers you need to successfully conduct and complete your IT project. Written in an easy-to-use question-and-answer format, the book covers all aspects of managing an IT project, from initial organizational issues to closeout. Following the classic project management processes, author David Pratt builds on the basics to offer valuable insights not found in other resources, including: • Proven techniques such as the best way to manage defects • How to create performance standards for outside contractors • How to develop a user’s manual For more technically inclined team members, the author’s plain-speak approach presents a refreshing view of the IT world. For those less technically oriented, he describes the tools and solutions for dealing with IT project challenges in an accessible, straightforward way. Let this information-packed resource lead you and your team to IT project success.

Increase Project Value = Attain the Goal Maximizing project value is about optimizing the tradeoff between project value and business value, two values that are constantly in tension between the project manager and the project sponsor. In this book the author brings his wealth of experience in project management to demonstrate how to increase a project’s value and ultimately contribute to the attainment of business goals From exploring the nature of “value,” as tangible resources and moral or ethical attributes, to how best to approach decision-making, the book offers thorough coverage of this essential aspect of project management. The tools and methods the author describes include: • Building the business case • Using a project balance sheet • Employing earned value • Introducing game theory for optimizing strategies This valuable reference should be on the desk of every project sponsor, business stakeholder, project manager, portfolio manager, project practitioner, and functional manager.

With its detailed, step-by-step approach Project Management Fundamentals takes the mystery out of project management. This fully revised and updated new edition is ideal either as a refresher for the experienced project manager, or as a comprehensive introduction for the new practitioner.

Full of practical tips and techniques on topics ranging from communication and reporting practices to risk mitigation Guerrilla Project Management offers a fast, flexible approach to managing any project - right here, right now!

Project Team Dynamics gets to the heart of building productive project teams and a strong team culture, offering practical advice to keep a team operating at the optimum level: solving problems, holding productive meetings and moving towards its goals.

Organizational Project Management: Linking Strategy and Projects brings together the insight and experience of ten contributing experts to show how Organizational Project Management (OPM) can improve business outcomes for your organization.

Pragmatic Project Management: Five Scalable Steps to Success is a practical and accessible guide to adopting the tactics and approach best suited to the size and complexity of your project. Learn how to scale your project management efforts in five key ways to maximise project success.

Bringing together a wealth of advice from experts in various levels of government, nonprofit origanizations and the academic world, Strategic Public Management offers real-life solutions to the complex challenges facing public administrators today.