The evolution of the DCMA 14 Point Schedule Assessment

The DCMA 14-Point schedule assessment process was part of a suite of systems developed by the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) starting in 2005. Its purpose was to standardize the assessment by DCMA staff of contractor developed Integrated Master Schedules.  

The DCMA is an agency of the United States federal government reporting to the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, responsible for administering contracts for the Department of Defense (DoD), and other authorized federal agencies. It was created in February 1990 as the Defense Contract Management Command (DCMC) within the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), then in March 2000, the DCMC was renamed as the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) and made an independent agency.

The DCMA works directly with defense suppliers and contractors to oversee their time, cost, and technical performance, by monitoring the contractors’ performance and management systems to ensure that cost, product performance, and delivery schedules comply with the terms and conditions of the contracts.

The DOD had published specifications for an Integrated Master Schedule since 1991. In March 2005, the USA Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology (USDA(AT&L)) issued a memo mandating the use of an Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) for contracts greater than $20 million and requiring the DCMA to establish guidelines and procedures to monitor and evaluate these schedules.

In response, the DCMA developed their 14-Point Assessment Checks as a protocol to be used for CPM schedule reviews made by their staff. The initial documentation describing this protocol appears to have consisted of an internal training course provided by the DCMA. The training was deployed as an on-line course in late 2007 and updated and re-issued on 21^st November 2009 (none of these training materials appear to be available – there may have been other changes).

The final and current update to the 14 Point Assessment was included in Section 4 of the Earned Value Management System (EVMS) Program Analysis Pamphlet (PAP) DCMA-EA PAM 200.1 from October 2012.  This PAP appears to still be current as at the start of 2024 with DCMA training available to assessors. This version is the basis of our guide: DCMA 14-Point Assessment Metrics.

However, the usefulness of this approach to assessing schedule quality is questionable!

The objectives of the DCMA 14 Point assessment is frequently misunderstood, this was discussed in DCMA 14 Point Schedule Assessment – Updated.

The validity of some of the ‘checks’ are questionable, they do not conform to standards set by various scheduling authorities.

And, the relevance of the DCMA 14-Points is also questionable. The publication of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) Schedule Assessment Guide in December 2015 appears to provide a more realistic basis for assessment. 

Based on the above, one has to ask if this old baseline for assessing schedule quality still relevant? For more on schedule quality assessment see: https://mosaicprojects.com.au/PMKI-SCH-020.php#Overview