GAO Schedule Assessmeent Guide: Best Practices for Project Schedules.

摘要

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 programs 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, it 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 on 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.