Introduction

The success of a program depends in part on having an integrated and reliable master schedule that defines when and how long work will occur and how each activity is related to the others. A schedule is necessary for government acquisition programs for many reasons. The program schedule provides not only a road map for systematic project execution but also the means by which to gauge progress, identify and resolve potential problems, and promote accountability at all levels of the program. A schedule provides a time sequence for the duration of a program’s activities and helps everyone understand both the dates for major milestones and the activities that drive the schedule. A program schedule is also a vehicle for developing a time-phased budget baseline.

Moreover, the schedule is an essential basis for managing tradeoffs between cost, schedule, and scope. Among other things, scheduling allows program management to decide between possible sequences of activities, determine the flexibility of the schedule according to available resources, predict the consequences of managerial action or inaction in events, and allocate contingency plans to mitigate risk. Following changes in a program, the schedule is used to forecast the effects of delayed, deleted, and added effort, as well as possible avenues for time and cost recovery. In this respect, schedules can be used to verify and validate proposed adjustments to the planned time to complete.

The GAO Schedule Assessment Guide is intended to expand on the scheduling concepts introduced in the Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide by providing ten best practices to help managers and auditors ensure that the program schedule is reliable. The reliability of the schedule determines the credibility of the program’s forecasted dates for decision making.

Our approach to developing this guide was to ascertain best practices from leading practitioners and to develop standard criteria to determine the extent agency programs and projects meet industry scheduling standards. To develop criteria for scheduling standards, we expanded on the criteria originally published in GAO’s Cost Estimating and Assessment Guide. We developed each best practice in consultation with a committee of cost estimating, scheduling, and earned value analysis specialists from across government, private industry, and academia. We released a public exposure draft of the GAO Schedule Assessment Guide in May 2012 and sought input and feedback from all who expressed interest for two years. We also compared the standards detailed in the guide with schedule standards and best practices developed by other agencies and organizations. We describe our scope and methodology in detail in appendix I. Some case studies in this guide are reprinted from GAO reports that are several years old. These case studies are reflective of agency practices at the time and are provided for illustration purpose only.

We conducted our work from November 2010 to November 2015 in accordance with all sections of GAO’s Quality Assurance Framework that are relevant to our objectives. The framework requires that we plan and perform the engagement to obtain sufficient and appropriate evidence to meet our stated objectives and to discuss any limitations in our work. We believe that the information and data obtained, and the analysis conducted, provide a reasonable basis for the guidance in this product.