Understanding the results of a schedule quality check

Once you have executed a schedule quality check, the results are displayed in a grid on the Quality Check Results dialog. The dialog displays a weighted total result at the top, giving an overall indication of whether the project has passed or failed the schedule quality check, taking the weighted results of all the quality metrics into account. This is followed by the results for each individual quality metric, optionally grouped by chart or summary group - depending on how you have configured the schedule quality check. You can use the buttons on this dialog to copy the results to the Clipboard - or to Microsoft Excel®, if Excel is installed on your computer - and to view the tasks that have failed a quality metric.

The Quality Check Results dialog appears when you execute a schedule quality check, once the quality check is complete. To access the dialog at any other time:

Click Last Results when viewing the properties of a schedule quality check in the Quality Check Properties dialog.
Right-click a schedule quality check in the Quality Checks pane and select Last results.

The results grid displays information about each quality metric in the following columns:

Column	Description
Check	The name of the quality metric. At the top of the results grid is the weighted total, which gives an overall indication of whether the project has passed or failed the schedule quality check, taking the weighted results of all the quality metrics into account.
Description	A description of the quality metric.
Result	The percentage result or ratio value of the quality metric, rounded down to the nearest integer. The result is colour-coded according to the metric's pass and fail boundaries: Green indicates a pass. Red indicates a fail. Amber indicates a result in between a pass and a fail. If there was nothing in the project for a particular quality metric to check - for example, if the quality check included the Baseline execution index metric and the project has no baseline - the result is shown as zero and coloured green. Quality metrics for which you cannot specify pass and fail boundaries (Rescheduled correctly, Invalid dates, Critical path test, and Link logic density) display a result of 100% if passed and 0% if failed.
Passed	Where appropriate, the number of items that passed the quality metric. Nothing is displayed in this column for the weighted total or for quality metrics that result in a simple pass or fail.
Total	Where appropriate, the number of items to which the passed value was compared to calculate the pass percentage or ratio result. Nothing is displayed in this column for the weighted total or for quality metrics that result in a simple pass or fail.

To view the tasks that have failed a quality metric:

Select a quality metric in the grid.
Click Show Failing Tasks. A view opens, displaying the tasks that have failed the quality metric. You can then review the tasks that have failed and take action to resolve any issues. You cannot generate a view containing tasks that have failed a metric for quality metrics that result in a ratio rather than a percentage, or for the Rescheduled correctly metric.

Understanding the weighted total result

For each quality metric, you can specify a "weighting" value. The weighting is the factor by which the quality metric should be multiplied to affect its impact on the weighted total result of the quality check - an indication of whether the quality check as a whole has passed or failed. For example, enter 2.00 to double a metric's impact, or 0.50 to halve it; a weighting of zero would mean that the metric had no effect on the weighted total result. Giving those metrics in which you are most concerned a higher weighting than other metrics increases their impact on the weighted total result.

The weighted total is calculated by multiplying the percentage result of each quality metric by its weighting value, summing the weighted results, then dividing this by the number of weighted quality metrics in the quality check.

For example, if a quality check included the following metrics:

Quality metric	Percentage result	Weighting	Pass or fail?
Link logic	60%	2.00	Fail
Detail	75%	0.50	Pass
Large float	85%	1.00	Neither pass nor fail

The weighted total would be calculated as follows:

Link logic: ((60 x 2) + (75 x 0.5) + (85 x 1)) / 3 = 80.83

This is rounded down to 80% (results are always rounded down to the nearest integer, rather than up).

The 'link logic density', 'critical path length index' and 'baseline execution index' quality metrics must be converted into percentages for weighting purposes:

The 'link logic density' metric gives a pass or fail result: if the metric is passed, it is given a percentage of 100%; if the metric is failed, it is given a percentage of 0%.
The 'critical path length index' and 'baseline execution index' metrics result in a ratio whereby any ratio greater than 1 is a desirable result; the closer the ratio approaches zero, the worse the result. The ratio is multiplied by 100 to achieve a percentage; any resulting percentages greater than 100% are reduced to 100%.

You can specify weighted total pass and fail boundaries for each quality check. These are set to 75% and 25% by default. If the weighted total pass and fail boundaries were left at their default values, a weighted total of 80% would represent a pass.

Note that the weighted total pass and fail boundaries bear no relation to the pass and fail boundaries of individual metrics. This means that you could have a quality check containing one or more metrics that fail with percentages of less than 100% , with a weighted total that passes because the overall result is greater than the weighted total pass boundary.

Note that the Missed tasks metric contributes to the weighted total by subtracting its percentage result from 100%, as its pass and fail boundaries are reversed. If this metric had a percentage result of 75%, its contribution to the weighted total would be 25% multiplied by its weighting value.