Pipeline Management
One place where the whole team can see what is actually in play.
Opportunities, stage, owner, priority, and deadline — held in a single shared board, with the capture work attached to each pursuit rather than filed somewhere beside it. The pipeline stops being a spreadsheet somebody updates before the meeting.
What changes
- Every pursuit has a stage, an owner, and a next date.
- The status meeting starts from the board instead of rebuilding it.
- Work that has stalled is visible as stalled.
The spreadsheet is accurate for about an hour a week.
Most GovCon pipelines live in a workbook that gets updated the morning of the review. Between updates it drifts: a deadline moves, a partner goes quiet, someone leaves, and the file keeps reporting the world as it was last Tuesday.
The tell is familiar. The meeting spends its first stretch establishing what is true, and the decisions it existed to make get pushed to next week.
- Stale by default
- The record is only current immediately after someone refreshes it.
- Ownership implied
- Everyone assumes a pursuit is covered because it appears on the list.
- Stalls stay invisible
- A pursuit that has not moved in a month looks the same as one that has.
Run the meeting as a set of decisions.
With the board current, the review can do what it was meant to do: reprioritize against capacity, advance the pursuits that have earned it, and be honest about the ones that have not moved in a month. The Pursuit Strategist works the pursuits between reviews, restaging what has moved and flagging what has stalled, so the board is accurate before anyone opens it.
It also makes capacity visible. When one person owns most of the active pursuits, that shows up on the board — and it is a much easier conversation to have before a deadline than after one.
- Reprioritize against capacity
- See the load per owner and rebalance before something slips.
- Advance or close
- Move pursuits through gates, or retire them with the reasoning kept.
- Work the deadlines
- Sort by what is due and assign the actions that protect it.
How a pursuit moves, and what has to be true at each stage.
Stages run in sequence, so the board reads as progress rather than as categories. Each names who holds it and what has to be on the record for a pursuit to sit there honestly.
- Identified: Is this worth a closer look? Owner: BD lead. Evidence: Sourced from a daily briefing, with the fit reasoning attached
- Qualified: Does it pass the fit and customer gates? Owner: BD lead. Evidence: Completed gate review with open items assigned
- Capture: Can we cover the requirement and shape the approach? Owner: Capture lead. Evidence: Teaming brief and staffing coverage on the pursuit
- Proposal: Are we committed and resourced to submit? Owner: Proposal lead. Evidence: Bid decision recorded and submission plan dated
- Submitted: What did we learn for the next cycle? Owner: BD lead. Evidence: Outcome and debrief notes kept against the pursuit
Questions teams ask
- Can we keep our own stages?
- Yes. The board reflects the stages your team already uses. What MERIT adds is that each stage carries an owner and the evidence a pursuit needs before it belongs there.
- How does the pipeline stay current?
- The capture work lives on the pursuit, so the board updates as the work happens rather than in a separate reporting step. The Pursuit Strategist restages what has moved and flags what has stalled alongside your team.
- Who can see the pipeline?
- Your team works from a shared workspace, so BD, capture, and leadership see the same board. It is meant to be the shared record rather than one person's file.