Daniel Crystal

Living below your means is probably the best advice you’ll get, although your budget may be tight as a GS-7. My two pieces of advice: prioritize your debts, and pay yourself for the future.
Assuming you have your living expenses covered (rent, internet and phone, etc.), priortize paying down whatever debt has the highest APR. Although you can’t…[Read more]

I had a senior PM once tell me that a good contracting officer will tell you what you can get away with rather than what you can’t do. Kind of like a good lawyer.

“I’m a hardcore libertarian,” but only when it comes out of the mouth of defense contractors who have no concept of irony.

My commander in Iraq. Even though we weren’t trained/equipped for the assigned mission, he put together a solid plan, gave the NCO’s enough time to properly train our Soldiers, and trusted his lieutenants (which included me) to run the show with broad guidance instead of detailed instructions. Long story short: what was supposed to take four…[Read more]

You bring up an interesting point, Kelly. One item that my team has been wrestling with has been defining what “program management” is. In my office, when we say “program manager” we mean “systems program manager,” or someone who is overseeing the procurement of large technical programs. But there are many other “program managers” as well, who…[Read more]

After talking with some folks over at VA, they actually have their PM’s go through a test that is actually a project management simulation. If you don’t past the test, you don’t get certified. My boss was actually extremely interested in this approach to certification, what does everyone else think?

In general, program managers are responsible for requirements development and overseeing the technical progress of a program, if the program requires development. He or she is ultimately responsible for the cost, schedule, and effectiveness of the system or service that his program office has been chartered to deliver.

DHS is similar to DoD, so…[Read more]

Yes. Shop online.

I have to disagree with you Peter. There are some people who focus on the minutiae of your writing, and I’ve noticed that those type of people tend to be: 1) supervisors and 2) have an engineering type background. Nitpicking is annoying and unproductive, but if your paper has glaring spelling and grammatical errors, the content doesn’t matter.…[Read more]

I actually have one of our interns researching the Plain Language Act so we can put on a workshop for our office. Although I’ve seen plenty of grammatical mistakes in the correspondence that comes across my desk, I think our tendency to write documents in acronym/legalese is a bigger problem.

Something that hasn’t been mentioned, but I think is important: don’t hoard information. It’s always bad for morale when getting someone to help you fill out a travel voucher is like pulling teeth.

Wow, this thread already has a slew of comments. My two cents: we can do more with less if government organizations are willing to embrace social media and other IT tools that allow employees to collaborate from around the globe. I know that the State Dept. has been very successful with this, while my department is still running Windows XP,…[Read more]

I make people smarter

I work with a lot of interns, and many of them are driven by a desire to make the government better. But they also aren’t usually tied down with a mortgage, family, etc., which means the cold, hard realities of adulthood haven’t kicked in yet. Finances can make people stick with a job they don’t like, because somebody needs to keep the lights…[Read more]