Schedule Audit

Run the DCMA 14-Point Schedule Assessment against your Microsoft Project file and get a one-page report your customer can read — pass/fail per metric, the offending tasks listed inline, no $thousands-per-seat tool, no cloud upload, no Project license required on the reading machine.

The problem

Schedule audits are a closed-shop economy.

→ Pain 01 · The 14 checks aren't built into Project

Project ships the inputs. It does not ship the audit.

Microsoft Project surfaces the fields the DCMA assessment needs — TotalSlack, ConstraintType, predecessor links, baseline data — but won't tell you "your Logic score is 87.6%, here are the 6 offending tasks." The standard path is a commercial tool: Acumen Fuse, Steelray Project Analyzer, Schedule Inspector. Each runs four figures per seat, requires installation on the PM's machine, and produces dashboards the PM then has to flatten to PDF to share. Smaller contractors and one-PM shops either skip the audit and find out at submission, or run a homegrown VBA macro that they don't trust.

"If you have tasks without predecessors, check the plan logic by asking: What is preventing this task happening today? If a task has no predecessors then in theory there is nothing in the logic of the plan to prevent it happening right now." Stakeholder Map · Top 10 MS Project Scheduling Mistakes

→ Pain 02 · Audit output isn't shareable

The dashboards lock the answer inside the auditor's tool.

Even when a PM has Acumen or Steelray, the output is a screenshot of an interactive dashboard. To share with the customer's program office, the integration manager's deck, or a steering committee, the PM exports to PDF — which loses the drill-down to "which task triggered Logic violation #4?" Pre-submission cycles burn an hour per round: re-status, re-run, fix, re-export, re-flatten, re-email. The longer the schedule, the worse the loop.

This tool addresses both: a deterministic local script that reads the Project XML, scores all 14 DCMA checks, and produces a single self-contained HTML artifact a customer can read — with the violating tasks listed inline so the PM can fix them without a second tool.

What it produces

One page, fourteen metric cards, pass/fail per card.

The output is a single self-contained HTML file written to ./output/. System fonts, no external CSS or JS, prints cleanly, embeds in email. Each metric shows the computed value, the DCMA threshold, the math, the violating tasks, and a one-line remediation hint. A final fix-list table consolidates every task flagged by at least one metric.

Generated Schedule Audit report showing the project header, overall score (PASSES 3 of 14), summary stats, the 14 metric cards in a three-column grid with pass and fail badges, and a fix-list table at the bottom. — Generated audit — demo defense schedule designed to fail eleven of fourteen

The fourteen metrics

01 · Logic

Missing predecessors / successors

Tasks disconnected from the network. DCMA threshold: ≤ 5%.

02 · Leads

Negative-lag relationships

Lead times obscure the true critical path. Threshold: 0%.

03 · Lags

Positive-lag relationships

Lags should be modeled as tasks, not as link modifiers. Threshold: ≤ 5%.

04 · Relationship types

Non-Finish-to-Start links

FS is the standard. Other types are valid but should be rare. Threshold: ≤ 10%.

05 · Hard constraints

MSO, MFO, SNLT, FNLT

Hard dates override logic. Threshold: ≤ 5%.

06 · High float

TotalSlack > 44 working days

High-float tasks are usually orphaned. Threshold: ≤ 5%.

07 · Negative float

TotalSlack < 0

Mathematically infeasible schedule. Threshold: 0%.

08 · High duration

Duration > 44 working days

Long tasks hide progress. Threshold: ≤ 5%.

09 · Invalid dates

Forecast dates in the past

Schedule isn't statused. Threshold: 0 tasks.

10 · Resources

Incomplete tasks with no resource

Tasks without resources cannot earn value. Threshold: ≤ 5%.

11 · Missed tasks

Late or unfinished baseline-due tasks

Either re-baseline or update actuals. Threshold: ≤ 5%.

12 · Critical path test

Zero-slack on critical tasks

Automated approximation of the DCMA what-if. Threshold: 100%.

13 · CPLI

Critical Path Length Index

Efficiency of the critical path. Threshold: ≥ 0.95.

14 · BEI

Baseline Execution Index

Completion rate vs. baseline. Threshold: ≥ 0.95.

Fix list

Combined table of every task that triggered at least one violation, with UID, ID, name, and the comma-separated list of metric numbers it appears in. This is the worksheet the PM takes back into Project.

What you need

Requirements

OSWindows, macOS, or Linux
RuntimePowerShell 7+ (pwsh). Windows PowerShell 5.1 is not supported.
BrowserAnything modern. Configuration UI is on localhost:8771.
MS ProjectRequired only on the PM's machine, to do a one-time File → Save As → XML Format. The auditing machine never touches Project.
NetworkNone. The tool reads a local file and writes a local file. No API, no cloud, no telemetry.
DataNever leaves your machine. Schedule data sits on disk; HTML is generated locally; you decide who gets the file.

Why these are packaged tools

Claude could write this. Two reasons to prefer the script.

Some workplaces — defense, medical devices, finance, anywhere with a strict IT policy — won't let Claude or any AI tool touch production data. These tools run locally with no network calls. And even where AI is allowed, repeat workflows shouldn't cost tokens — a deterministic script runs the same way every time, for free, forever. The prompt guide below shows how this tool was built with Claude; the download is what you run after.

Get the tool

Three files. Free.

The tool itself, a user guide that walks through the one-time XML export and the Discover/Generate loop plus the per-PMO threshold overrides, and a prompt guide showing how this was built with Claude Code — the spec, the hand-crafted fixture with every DCMA violation seeded, and the Pester contract that pins each metric's count.

Schedule Audit local UI showing discovery banner with Radar System Integration, 20 leaf tasks, 21 relationships, the 14 threshold inputs pre-filled with DCMA defaults, and a Generate audit button. — The local configuration UI — tune thresholds per PMO, click Generate

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