Date of Award

9-1994

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Cost Analysis

First Advisor

David S. Christensen, PhD

Abstract

Managers of Department of Defense programs would benefit from having cost and schedule benchmarks that are based on the historical performance of similar programs. This research generated cost and schedule variance in percent benchmarks for 48 collectively exhaustive and mutually exclusive categories of DoD contracts. The ANOVA nested design methodology was used to compare these cost and schedule benchmarks across related categories of contracts to determine if the benchmarks were statistically significantly different. Such statistical difference would ensure program managers had a very specific tool tailored to their unique needs. Due to some relatively small sample sizes in the study, along with the rather large standard deviations associated with those samples, the majority of benchmarks did not prove to be statistically significantly different. As a result, most benchmarks do not uncategorically describe one, and only one, category of contract. Thus, program managers must exercise caution when drawing conclusions about how the cost and schedule performance of their current programs compares to the historical average. A few years from now, as the number of contracts included in the DAES database grows larger, a greater number of cost and schedule benchmarks that test statistically significantly different should be able to be calculated.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GCA-LAS-94S-2

DTIC Accession Number

ADA285001

Comments

Co-authored thesis.

The authors' Vita pages are omitted.

Presented to the Faculty of the School of Logistics and Acquisition Management of the Air Force Institute of Technology.

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