Schedule Narrative
Regardless of whether a change triggers schedule change control, all changes made to the schedule during statusing should be documented, and salient changes should be justified along with their likely effect on future activities. A schedule narrative should accompany the updated schedule to provide decision makers and auditors a log of changes and their effect, if any, on the schedule time. The scope of the schedule narrative varies with project and contract complexity but should contain, at a minimum,
the status of key milestone dates, including the program finish date;
the status of key hand-offs or giver/receiver dates;
explanations for any changes in key dates;
changes in network logic, including lags, date constraints, and relationship logic and their effect on the schedule;
a description of the critical paths, near-critical paths, and longest paths along with a comparison to the previous period’s paths; and
a description of any significant scheduling software options that have changed between update periods, such as the criticality threshold for total float and progress override versus retained logic and whether resource assignments progress with duration.
Significant variances between planned and actual performance, as well as actual and planned logic, should be documented and understood. Assessing the updated critical path is particularly crucial. It should be compared to the critical path from the baseline and the prior period’s schedule and assessed for reasonableness. Total float should be examined and compared to the last period’s schedule to identify trends. For activities that are behind schedule, the remaining duration should be evaluated and the delay’s effect on succeeding activities in the network should be understood. If a delay is significant, management should develop a plan to examine the options to recover from the schedule slip. In addition, near-critical paths should be assessed and compared against previous near-critical paths. A decrease in total float values on a near-critical path indicates activities that are slipping. The path may soon be critical, because float will not be available for successive activities on that path. Case study 18 illustrates the effect of a lack of consistent documentation requirements.
GAO conducted a reliability assessment on selected projects of the Joint Polar Satellite System program IMS. We found that the JPSS program office established a preliminary integrated master schedule and implemented multiple scheduling best practices, but the integrated master schedule was not complete and weaknesses in component schedules significantly reduced the program’s schedule quality as well as management’s ability to monitor, manage, and forecast satellite launch dates. The incomplete integrated master schedule and shortfalls in component schedules stemmed in part from the program’s plans to refine the schedule as well as schedule management and reporting requirements that varied among contractors.
The inconsistency in quality of the three schedules had multiple causes. Program and contractor officials explained that in some cases they corrected certain weaknesses with updated schedules. In other cases, the weaknesses lacked documented explanation, in part because the JPSS program office did not require contractors to provide such documentation. We found that schedule management and reporting requirements varied across contractors without documented justification for tailored approaches, which may partially explain the inconsistency of practices in the schedules. Because the reliability of an integrated schedule depends in part on the reliability of its subordinate schedules, schedule quality weaknesses in these schedules transfers to an integrated master schedule derived from them. Consequently, quality weaknesses in JPSS-1 support schedules further constrained the program’s ability to monitor progress, manage key dependencies, and forecast completion dates.