You’ve won a government contract, congratulations! You are very excited to continue developing your product or service for government use. You’re likely focused on the main deliverable, your product. You know there are other contractual deliverables but those are less important than the main product the government is paying you to develop, right? Wrong. The quality and timeliness of ALL your deliverables is a direct reflection of your company, and the government absolutely notices the difference between good and bad deliverables. 

So, what makes a good deliverable? The answer is quite simple, quality and timeliness. In some cases, there are specific required templates for deliverables and in other cases, you will get to decide how the information is presented. Regardless of the amount of guidance given on deliverable content, you should always do your best to provide a high-quality product that you’re proud to have associated with your company name. Deliverables don’t just end up with the contracting officer that you submit them too. Those deliverables are sent to numerous people in the government space relative to your project. They are often seen by the program manager, engineers, potential interested government organizations, the user, etc. So, when you haphazardly throw together a deliverable, assume that the government doesn’t care as much about one deliverable as the other, or simply do the bare minimum to get paid, that type of behavior is noticed, and it’s interpreted that you are a company that only cares about what is important to them and not what’s important to their customer. This interpretation can lead to a poor company reputation that follows you. 

As one way to explain this, I’ll use a commonly overlooked yet highly shared deliverable: meeting materials. Slides are created by the contractor for the government for a variety of reasons. Kick-off meetings, preliminary design review, critical design review, and status updates are a few examples. When slides are presented to the government that look thrown together, are incomplete, are full of typos, are missing relevant information, or simply look sloppy, you are doing yourself a disservice. Are you technically meeting the deliverable? Most likely. Very rarely do I see the government give a template for meeting slides, so you really can build them however you wish. However, the quality of your product tells the government that you have a lot of priorities and that portraying information to them via this meeting and these slides either is or is not one of them. By cleaning up your slides, making them look professional and complete, including relevant and up to date information, you have spent a little bit of extra time to demonstrate that you do care about ALL the products your company produces, not just the products you’ve deemed the most important. 

Another example is quarterly or financial reports. Quarterly reports usually come with some baseline of required information the government is requesting. Financial reports regularly come with a required template or format for presenting information. Both reports are a standard requirement for most government contracts. They take some time to put together. They require manhours to gather the data, sort the data, and present the data. While these reports may seem arbitrary to you, especially when they take away resources from development, they are a requirement (depending on the contract, a legal requirement) for the government to obtain. These reports are important to the government because they are also obligated to provide status and financial reports “up the chain” on a regular basis. So, reports that you may see as arbitrary, and a waste of resources are not arbitrary and a waste of resources to your customer. 

You may be thinking, this is a lot of effort on some slides and reports, and you’d rather be developing your product. I understand. I’m not recommending that you spend a lot of manhours making everything perfect. All I’m suggesting is that you look at each document, each product, or each service you deliver to your government customer and ensure it’s something you’d be willing to defend on quality and timeliness. Make sure it’s something you’re proud to associate with your company. 

Lastly, be on time. Timeliness is one of the most basic actions you can take to garner trust and dependability. Are there times when schedules get away from you? Absolutely, yes. We will discuss this further in next week’s blog, but this is when communication with your government customer is crucial. Early communication on delayed deliverables is much better than surprising the government by missing a deadline. If you become a company that continually submits deliverables in a timely manner and communicates early and often, that will go a long way in building a solid relationship with your government customer. Communication is crucial for understanding the content and context of deliverables and is crucial when timelines will be missed. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts on quality and timely deliverables, so please leave a comment! Also, be on the lookout for next week’s blog regarding the importance of good communication with your government customer. 

Keep moving forward,