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The intent of the NDIA Integrated Program Management Division (IPMD) Planning & Scheduling Excellence Guide (PASEG) is to provide program management teams and schedulers with practical approaches for building, using, and maintaining an Integrated Master Schedule (IMS). The guide identifies knowledge, awareness, and processes to assist in achieving reasonable consistency and a standardized approach to project planning, scheduling and analysis. Section 2 in the guide discusses the Generally Accepted Scheduling Principles (GASP) – eight over-archiving tenets for building, maintaining, and using schedules as effective management tools.

A sound schedule is essential for effective program management. Sound schedules merge cost and technical data to influence program management decisions and actions. Realistic schedules help stakeholders make key go-ahead decisions, track and assess past performance, and predict future performance and costs. Program teams can benefit from the guide to gain a common understanding of key scheduling terms, concepts, and practices. It includes examples, illustrations, practical tips and caveats for scheduling techniques that apply for any scheduling software tool or environment. Using the guide, a program team can build and maintain more robust and dynamic schedules that provide a roadmap for improved program execution.

This extensive document provides how-to direction or instruction and was designed to translate earned value or scheduling policy and guidance into practical approaches for improving scheduling capabilities and outputs. Although written primarily for the DoD community, this guide provides scheduling practices or techniques that apply to any industry. The primary focus is on scheduling for large programs with high technical, schedule, and cost risks.