Case Study: Attempts in Varying Degrees to Capture All Effort

The Government Accountability Office $($GAO$)$ in the United States government analysed four

enterprise resource planning system schedules and found that none of the programs had developed

a fully integrated master schedule as an effective tool to help in the management of the programs.

In particular, the schedules differed in the extent to which they captured all activities, as well as in

their integration of government and contractor activities. For example, the Defence Enterprise

Accounting and Management System Program Management Office did not have a schedule that

integrated government and contractor activities. It maintained internal schedules that reflected

government$-$only activities, but these activities were not linked to the contractor$$s activities. While the

Army$$s Global Combat Support System schedule identified contractor activities, it contained only key

government milestones for the program. Other government activities, such as testing events and

milestones beyond December $2017,$ were not captured in the schedule. Instead, they were displayed

in isolated, high$-$level illustrated documents.

The Expeditionary Combat Support System program schedule contained detailed activities

associated with government

effort and contractor effort. However, the government activities were not fully linked to contractor

activities, so that updates to government activities did not directly affect scheduled contractor

activities. Finally, while the General Fund Enterprise Business System schedule captured

government and contractor activities, key milestones in deployment, software release, and

maintenance were not fully integrated, precluding a comprehensive view of the entire program.

In scheduling, best practices are interrelated so that deficiencies in one best practice cause

deficiencies in other best practices. For example, if the schedule does not capture all activities, then

there will be uncertainty about whether activities are sequenced in the correct order and whether the

schedule properly reflects the resources needed to accomplish the work.

$1.$ You have been appointed as the consulting project manager to the GAO. Having examined

the various issues with the four enterprise resource planning system schedules, advise on

scheduling best practice that the GAO can adopt in order to ensure that they produce a

realistic schedule that will deliver acceptable results. $25$ Marks