Acquisition reform has long been the goal of the Department of Defense to save, recover and redistribute funds in an efficient manner. The Space and Missile Systems Center Program Management and Integration Directorate (SMC/PI) and Acquisitions Center of Excellence (ACE) have shared the same effort and have made strides to better their acquisition processes. Many different angles have been examined to try to discover cost and schedule growth however, little research has been done to find the drivers of schedule length. This research is aimed at finding contributing factors to the length of schedule of the pre-acquisition process. By using Fisher’s Exact test and contingency table analysis programs were explored to find what factors contribute to the length of schedule. The results of this analysis show significance can be found in the contract’s type, strategy and the phases in which a program is in. Additionally, the research shows significance with programs that waive stages
