Schedule Quality
DCMA 14-Point Assessment
The DCMA 14-Point Assessment is a standardized set of 14 checks -- developed by the Defense Contract Management Agency -- used to evaluate whether a project schedule is well-built enough to be trusted for forecasting and delay analysis.
Definition
Before any delay conclusion drawn from a schedule can be trusted, the schedule itself has to be structurally sound -- properly logic-tied, free of unrealistic constraints, and internally consistent. The DCMA 14-Point Assessment checks exactly that: logic (activities missing predecessors or successors), leads (negative lag, often used to artificially compress a schedule), lags, relationship types (an overreliance on Start-to-Start/Finish-to-Finish logic instead of Finish-to-Start), hard constraints, high float, negative float, high duration, invalid forecast dates, missing resources, missed tasks, critical path continuity, the Critical Path Length Index (CPLI), and the Baseline Execution Index (BEI). A schedule that fails several of these checks isn't necessarily unusable, but its float values, critical path, and delay conclusions all deserve extra scrutiny -- and the assessment gives a consistent, defensible way to say exactly why.
Example
Running the assessment on a 900-activity schedule flags 40 activities with no predecessor or successor, a negative-float count of zero (passing), and 12 activities with hard constraints -- prompting a closer look at whether those 40 logic gaps could be masking a more accurate critical path.