Schedule Quality is an analytics feature that provides an objective, data-driven score for any project schedule and tells you exactly what to fix and why.
Table of Contents:
- How to use schedule quality
- Generate a schedule quality score
- Understand your schedule quality
- Fix schedule quality issues
- Limitations
- Appendix: Detailed metric definitions
How to use schedule quality
The schedule quality feature supports a repeatable workflow to evaluate and improve schedules.
- Generate a schedule quality score on any imported schedule or an ALICE-generated schedule
- Understand any quality issues negatively impacting your score with the schedule quality dashboard and pass/fail scores for 13 key quality metrics.
- Fix any issues in your schedule with the downloadable schedule quality fix report
Generate a schedule quality score
There are two ways to generate a schedule quality score:
-
Upload a schedule. ALICE will automatically calculate a quality score as part of the import process. You can click the schedule quality link to access the full functionality.
2. View scores for all schedules in ALICE. Go to the Analyze page and click the Schedule Quality tab to view the quality score and details for any schedule uploaded to ALICE or generated by ALICE.- Select a schedule using the drop-down menu.
- To enable comparison mode and view the quality of 2 schedules side-by-side, toggle the Compare slider.
Understand your schedule quality
The 0-100 quality score gives you an overall measure of schedule reliability. It is a weighted composite of 13 underlying metrics across 3 categories:
- Logic integrity
- Critical path & float integrity
- Duration & progress validity
The quality score applies a severity multiplier for metrics that significantly exceed the red threshold. The more severely a metric fails, the more it will bring down the overall score. This ensures that critical structural issues are properly reflected in your overall score, even if other metrics are passing.
Click on the tile for each category to view the underlying metrics within each category and how the schedule was scored.
Tip: All schedule quality metrics are compatible with the Insights Agent. You can ask questions in the chat window to get more details on any data points you see on the quality tab.
This is an example of the logic integrity section of the score, which is comprised of 7 unique metrics.
The evaluated activities column will show how many activities in your schedule could possibly have the condition being evaluated, and how many activities actually had that condition.
Tip: hover over any metric for a detailed specification of how it is calculated and scored.
Fix schedule quality issues
Once you’ve reviewed your schedule score and metrics, use the fix report to address flagged issues.
Click View issues next to your score to see a list of all flagged metrics grouped by severity:
Click the Export all issues button to download a detailed spreadsheet of every flagged metric, which activities or relationships were flagged, and fix instructions.
Users can choose to apply the recommended fixes directly into P6 or MSP, or apply them in ALICE and export the improved schedule.
Limitations
The metrics of this score are focused on schedule logic and CPM best practice. Think of it as a spelling and grammar check for schedule logic. Semantic issues like nonsensical sequences (curing concrete before pouring it) require human expertise to catch.
The health scoring criteria is standardized and at present cannot be customized per customer. Customized criteria is something we are considering in the future, reach out to your Customer Success Manager if you would like to provide product feedback in this area.
Appendix: Detailed metric definitions
Mapping the 0-100 quality score values to reliability ratings:
| Score range | What it means |
|---|---|
| Reliable ≥ 80 | CPM foundation is sound. Schedule is reliable enough to make project decisions from. Optimization output will reflect an accurate picture of the work. |
| Limited Reliability 60–79 | Some structural issues remain. Schedule can be used but certain metrics warrant attention before baseline approval or optimization. |
| Unreliable < 60 | Significant structural problems. Dates, float values, and the critical path are not reliable. Issues must be resolved before the schedule can be trusted. |
The overall score is based on a weighted composite of 13 metrics across three quality categories:
| Category | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Logic Integrity | 50% | Whether activities have complete, meaningful precedence logic and proper constraint usage. The foundation of all CPM calculations. Contains 7 metrics. |
| Critical Path & Float Integrity | 35% | Whether critical path and float calculations behave correctly and can be trusted for optimization and risk management. Contains 4 metrics. |
| Duration & Progress Validity | 15% | Whether activity durations and progress data are realistic and logically consistent. Contains 2 metrics. |
Specific metrics, weighting, and purpose for all metrics that contribute to the overall quality score:
| ID | Metric | Weight | What it flags |
|---|---|---|---|
| M01 | Logic (Open Ends) | 12% | Activities missing required predecessor or successor connections — the single most important structural metric |
| M02 | Negative Lags | 5% | Relationships with negative lag values, which mask logic and create unreliable date calculations |
| M03 | Positive Lags | 6% | Excessive positive lag usage substituted for proper activity logic |
| M04 | Invalid Relationship Types | 6% | Inappropriate use of SS/FF relationships where FS relationships are required |
| M05 | Hard Constraint Misuse | 5% | Overuse of mandatory date constraints (MSO/MFO) that artificially lock the schedule |
| M06 | Preferential / Artificial Logic | 9% | Non-physical dependencies encoded as hard logic — the hardest problem for the ALICE solver to work around. Weight increased to reflect solver impact. |
| M07 | ALAP Scheduling | 7% | Activities scheduled as-late-as-possible, creating artificial float and unreliable dates |
| M08 | High Float | 12% | Excessively high float values masking missing logic — most common severe violation in real customer schedules. Weight increased. |
| M09 | Negative Float | 10% | Activities with negative float — the clearest signal of an infeasible schedule. Zero-threshold metric: any violation triggers the severity multiplier. |
| M10 | Critical Path Completeness | 9% | Whether a continuous critical path exists from project start to finish. Binary pass/fail — a fail scores 0 regardless of any other metric. |
| M11 | Path Convergence Ratio | 4% | Multiple near-critical paths converging, amplifying delay risk at merge points. Weight reduced — a risk indicator, not a reliability indicator. |
| M12 | Over-Long Durations | 6% | Activities with durations that exceed reasonable work-package thresholds |
| M13 | Invalid Dates & Status | 9% | Illogical combinations of status data, actual dates, and remaining duration. Zero-threshold metric: any violation triggers the severity multiplier. Weight increased. |