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PM Follies 17.0: “The ‘Nice-to-Have’ Money Drop – Where to Park It?” edition.
Currently playing budget Tetris with sponsor surprise dollars while trying not to trigger a full SOW rewrite.
Just got off a 38-minute call with the sponsor action officer that started as “quick FYI” and ended with me mentally mapping every open CLIN like it’s a heat map of available real estate.
Sponsor (cheerful, dangerous tone):
“Hey Wade, great news—we’ve got an unexpected $192k tranche coming loose from a parallel effort. It’s human-performance adjacent, unobligated, and we’d love to push it your way before it gets swept back to the pot. Can you absorb it? No major scope change needed, just accelerate or enhance what you’re already doing.”
Me (instant internal alarm bells):
“Appreciate the offer—$192k is real money. Before we say yes, can you confirm: this is incremental funding to the existing award, right? Not a new vehicle or mod that requires full re-competition?”
Sponsor: “Same vehicle, same prime, same SOW umbrella. We just want to see faster progress on the things you’re already funded for. Maybe more subjects, more ablation runs, extra travel, whatever fits without rewriting the whole thing.”
Translation: They want to spend it, but nobody wants the paperwork headache of a major scope change that triggers new CDRLs, new IRB amendments, new risk assessments, new congressional reporting thresholds, or (God forbid) a protest risk.
So I did the classic PM move: opened the financials and hunted for “room.”
Current landscape (redacted for my sanity):
CLIN 0001 (core protocol development): 92% obligated / 88% expended = tiny sliver left
CLIN 0002 (data collection & analysis): 78% obligated / 65% expended = decent headroom (~$240k unobligated, ~$410k unexpended)
CLIN 0003 (field demos & transition support): 61% obligated / 42% expended = biggest pocket (~$310k unobligated, ~$620k unexpended runway)
CLIN 0004 (program management & travel): 95% burned = basically dead
Verdict: CLIN 0003 has the most breathing room without screaming “scope creep.” We’re already planning two more military on-sites and one sim-facility integration event. Sponsor loves field data. More subjects = more data = more stories for their briefings to leadership.
My counter (calm, professional, zero desperation):
“Happy to absorb the $192k into CLIN 0003. We can accelerate participant throughput for the closed-loop cognitive battery under operational stress, add ~45–50 more Marines across the remaining sites, plus one extra travel event to the classified sim facility for validation runs. All within existing SOW task descriptions (no new objectives, no new deliverables, just higher n and deeper environmental variability). Keeps the scope envelope intact, no major mod required just an incremental funding mod and updated spend plan.”
Sponsor (relieved):
“That tracks perfectly. I’ll get the paperwork rolling. You’re saving me from losing the money to another office. Thanks for making it easy.”
What I didn’t say:
This avoids the nightmare of justifying a scope change to finance, contracts, and the IRB
It buys breathing room on the bridge gap because more expended = stronger case for follow-on
It gives the team actual work instead of “unfunded advisory” purgatory
And if we play it right, the extra data might make the pivot from 10.0 look intentional instead of desperate
New risk register entry unlocked:
“Absorbing surprise incremental funding without triggering major scope change review”
Probability: Low if we stay disciplined (LOL)
Impact: Medium if someone later claims “that wasn’t in the original vision”
Mitigation: Document everything with “enhancement of existing tasks” language, update the spend plan with granular justification, CC contracts & finance on the acceptance email, and pray nobody audits the word “accelerate” too hard
Current PM Follies 17.0 bingo card:
□ Sponsor says “no major scope change needed” like it’s that simple
□ “Just accelerate what you’re doing” code for “spend it fast”
□ Found the one CLIN with actual headroom
□ Everyone pretends adding 50 subjects isn’t a mini-scope expansion
□ Risk “post-facto scope question” added in yellow
□ Sponsor relieved they didn’t lose the money
□ We schedule a “funds absorption alignment sync” (aka victory lap)
□ I quietly move $20k of contingency to beer-and-pizza reserves
Blackout called at 3:42 p.m.
I’m saving the smug “we found room” smirk for when the mod hits and the team gets to keep running instead of treading water.
Human performance research funding zen: when surprise money appears, the real skill isn’t saying yes, it’s saying yes without lighting the entire program on fire with paperwork. (send clean mods or send more surprise pockets, preferably both)
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