Earned Value Management in Easy Steps

Measuring Project Progress

What we are concerned with in project management has been defined as the Iron Triangle of: Time, Cost and Scope. Traditional project management methodology tends to focus on time and cost, as scope is fixed, isn’t it? But the way progress is typically reported is through the Gantt (or bar) chart, and in particular a tracking Gantt chart illustrates where a project currently is against the schedule. Also typically, the accounts department will produce reports on cost against budget, but this just shows what we have spent up to the last accounting period against the total budget. But this doesn’t really tell us exactly where we are in terms of progress today and where we will be at the end of the project. And that is precisely why Earned Value Management was developed.

Earned Value Management

Earned Value Management (EVM) helps us to determine the real status of a project. As well as telling us how much time and money we have spent, it also shows us how much we have achieved. Further, it tells us how much we still need to do and provides a good indication of final costs and expected completion dates of the project.

EVM builds on, and therefore supports good project management practice and underpins good corporate governance. Its introduction can drive the cultural and organizational change key to supporting these objectives. In summary:

• It provides an objective measurement of what has been achieved on a project
• It enables accurate forecasting
• It provides project management information in a format that is easy for all stakeholders to understand and act upon
• It provides an early warning of problems, which allows the timely identification and analysis of progress and cost issues and corrective actions to be identified
• It shows stakeholders whether they’re getting value for money
• It enables detailed project comparisons across programs and portfolios
• It can be scaled to fit projects of all sizes and complexities
• It has the ability to combine measurements of scope, time and cost (the Iron Triangle) in a single integrated system
• In summary EVM provides a set of metrics that will enable you to accurately report on project progress to date and to completion.

In addition, research has shown that the areas of planning and control are significantly improved by the use of EVM; and similarly, using the methodology improves both scope definition as well as the analysis of overall project performance. Finally it has shown that the use of EVM is a positive predictor of project success.