Chapter 2 THE PAST PERFORMANCE CYCLE

Envisioning past performance as a cycle of activities helps to illustrate its potential power as a self-reinforcing process. By generating feedback that can be used to improve performance, these activities can improve contract outcomes and increase chances of business growth. As used by both buyer and seller, the past performance cycle includes some form of information collection, analogous processes of interpretation or evaluation, and a point or phase in the cycle we will call “use.” These cycles operate continuously and incorporate many levels of activity, including purchases, projects, project phases, and incentives.

The past performance activities of buyers and sellers follow different cycles. As depicted here, the seller past performance cycle is more of a closed loop than the buyer past performance cycle, primarily because contract performance was taken out of the buyer cycle but left in the seller cycle. This was done to emphasize the primary role of the seller in contract performance. It is, admittedly, somewhat simplistic, in that the buyer can and does play an important role in contract performance—for example, by providing access to resources critical to contract performance. In truth, this is a shared responsibility; nonetheless, the emphasis is on the seller for performance.

The two cycles also overlap in several ways. External inputs and activities that take place outside the cycles impact each cycle, and both buyer and seller collect from the same sources and inputs, such as a person completing a past performance questionnaire or CPARS report. Additionally, the cycles overlap in the sense that ideally, both buyer and seller are interested in improving performance. Finally, both cycles feed back into themselves.