Talk:Earned value management

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[edit] Suggestion for an Introduction for non-PM professionals

I think this is a superb article, however I have a suggestion which I think might improve it a bit - I would however welcome other opinions on this.

My suggestion is based on my understanding of Earned Value being a measure which is first and foremostly aimed to provide key stakeholders & sponsors with regular empirical data about the progress of a project, which will enable them to make decisions such as deciding when to stop a project or demand a replan and a revised budgetary forecast.

In my experience these key recipients of this information will not be specialists in the technical aspects of project management such as EVM, and need to understand what EVM offers them 'in their own language' - i.e. in terms that a typical business manager might understand & relate to.

In simpler words, I think an explanation of EVM in layman's terms would be useful, beause the layman is actually the real customer of EVM.

Why is this?

My experience is that reporting of project progress from project managers and project teams is potentially unreliable - because the PMs and their teams are reporting on their own progress and productivity there is a risk that they will err on the side of optimism, only report successes and attempt to hide failures, risks and issues in the hope that they can be sorted out 'behind the scenes' without alarming sponsors & stakeholders and risking stopping the project (& possibly the livelihoods of the PM and team).

My understanding is that EVM effectively cuts through such potentially dubious reporting by exactly clarifying how the project has progressed in terms of cost and delivery, to the extent that it provides an auditable history of the project's progress against a baseline - EVM's real value is that it is the only truly empirical measure of progress vs. plan which is both measurable and indisputable, and that is why the SOX legislation in USA has effectively made EVM a mandatory requirement for all projects undertaken by USA corporations (and often extended into their non-US subsidiaries). This legislation may well be taken up by other countries.

I think this article would benefit from an introduction to EVM from a layman's perspective, because most of it describes the in-depth technical details of EVM which are of most use to PM professionals who might need to measure & report on EV, rather than the key fundamental business drivers which are important to stakeholders and sponsors who make decisions.

My suggestion for a layman's description of EVM is along these lines;

- the project plan presented by your PM and team is just a forecast - it should be a time-based forecast of both the expected costs of the project and the expected delivery dates of key deliverables. The plan should be baselined to establish this forecast as being that which progress will be measured against. The key elements of the baseline should be clear and understood between all sponsors/stakeholders.
- EVM will give you a clear, precise & auditable measure of progress against this baseline, in terms of delivery and cost. These have to be viewed in combination, because viewing one without the other is misleading e.g. "We are exactly on budget" (but we have only delivered 80% of what we should have) or "We have delivered exactly to plan" (but it has cost 50% more). EVM measures what has been delivered and at what cost, compared to the baseline. It also provides a revised forecast to complete based on actual progress to date, so that if the project has only delivered e.g 80% of what it should have and has cost e.g. 150% of what it should have, the forecast will be that the baselined cost for the what remains outstanding should be revised to be 25% more time and 50% more cost! So if your baseline was for a 12-month project costing $1M, EVM will forecast a 15-month project costing $1,5M - this will directly impact the business case and may require action.
- the basic principle of EVM is to use hindsight to provide foresight - to revise your forecast of the future progress of your project vs. the baseline based on the actual progress of your project to date.
- EVM is a good thing, but it is only as good as the data provided to it. There is considerable potential for error in the practicalities of capturing the basic data of completion of deliverables and costs, e.g.

    - development of software may be described as completed, but independent testing of software may prove that considerable rework is required
    - actual costs may appear be captured, but some costs may be deferred until later (e.g. cross-charges of resources between departments) and therefore hidden until appearing as a later surprise

- if you don't use EVM, you are ignoring the only true & empirical data available about your project's progress and instead relying on Project Manager/Team reports on progress, which may well err on the side of optimism.

I am not an experienced poster on Wikipedia, and I realise I may have expressed opinions as facts and probably committed some other minor transgressions in this post, for which I apologise and I would also like to reiterate that I think the currect article is a superb explanation of EVM, just not quite aimed at the real customers of EVM.

It should hopefully be obvious that my focus is on making EVM accessible and understood (in business terms) to the people whom I believe are its key customers - the project sponsors and stakeholders who need to make decisions about projects based on EVM. I don't think these people will have the time to analyse and understand the fairly complex equations that make up PV, EV, TCPI etc. - they just need the real lowdown in their owm business language.

That's all folks - please be kind!! --86.148.144.124 (talk) 01:50, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

As I mentioned here over two weeks ago, I have been working toward a major re-write of this article. I posted the new article this evening! The main objective of this re-write was to make EVM accessible to a general audience. Therefore, the new article does not start with a thousand acronyms, but builds understanding in stages. By starting with EVM for small projects (and focusing attention on technical performance) and building to EVM for large projects, our general audience will have better understanding of how to scale EVM for projects of various size and complexity. The new article also includes five figures that I have created from scratch. If you have any suggestions for improving the figures, please let me know. If you want to know why I didn't include some aspect of the old article, I'll be happy to explain. --Garrybooker 05:17, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

In yet another small victory for Wikipedia, this article has now climbed to the top of the Google rankings for the search terms "Earned Value" and "Earned Value Management". --Garrybooker 15:19, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] EVM Scalability

I made a change in the description of EVM scalability. It now refers to a range of simple-to-advanced implementations of EVM instead of a range of small-to-large projects. This is because it is possible (and usually quite valuable) to integrated technical, schedule and cost performance on small projects. In other words, I don't want to imply that small projects necessarily reject full-featured implementations. If the capability exists, by all means use it. --Garrybooker 21:22, 21 July 2006 (UTC);

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[edit] Article

This reads like an entire college course in a single article...any chance it can be pruned down to a concise explanation with some references and links? Paul 03:22, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, if it reads like an academic paper (to a general audience) it might be because of the formulas and acronyms. If this is what you meant, I agree completely. I hope it isn't because of the graphics, because I really think graphics make EVM easier to comprehend. Besides, some people will come to Wikipedia to learn how to read EVM line charts. I hope it isn't because of the crawl-walk-run approach to describing technical-schedule-cost integration because it is written to make EVM accessible to a general audience. So without more specific recommendations, I assume the problem is the formulas and acronyms -- they are a common barrier to understanding and acceptance of EVM essentials. If anybody would like to second the motion, I will move formulas and most of the acronyms to a separate article. But they should not be removed from Wikipedia. Also, changing the outline structure (outdenting Section 5 subsections) may have been unintentional, so I'm restoring it; the narrative flow is better with the indented outline structure. --Garrybooker 02:34, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

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Garry (Article) - This is great. Thanks Peter, PMP 9:45am, 18 April 2007

My pleasure, Peter. /Garrybooker 16:47, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Acronyms

When learning EVM in school, the mutable number of Acronyms for the same item always bothered me, and here this article is the same way. Some one should go through and standardize the acronyms used in the article and then create a list of alternative acronyms. When I have some time if no one else has done and there is no one in disagreement, I will do it.Zath42 17:27, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External links

I have removed the following external links from this page per WP:EL. If any of these websites were used as sources for the text in this article, please link the source to the text using WP:Footnotes. Thank you! --Busy Stubber 01:36, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree. There is only one external link (the .com link) that should be deleted. The others are recommended government and professional organization references that are easily justified by a person skilled in the art. I can't find a requirement in WP:EL that says recommended sites must be footnoted to be included in an External Links Section. Regarding the wikify tag, more specifics in this Talk page would be useful. --Garrybooker 04:46, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
So.... If there are no comments or clarifications, I will restore the top six EVM-related external links (minus the .com link). I'm not sure what to do about the "wikify" tag, without comments or clarifications, except give it some more time. --Garrybooker 19:23, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Garyrybooker, read WP:MOS to understand "wikify". One quick suggestion is to make the headings lower-case except the first letter. Also, since you're a volunteer with PMI, it's not considered good etiquette in Wikipedia for you to add your own organization as an external link without agreement from other editors. See WP:COI. For more information related to external links, see WP:NOT. Hope this is helpful. --Busy Stubber 23:23, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
For the record, I am a volunteer for the PMI Tulsa Chapter, and have no conflict of interest (COI) with the College of Performance Management or the PMI parent organization. Further, I have not referenced any of my own work, so I'm squeaky clean on COI. I welcome other editors' opinions on including PMI-CPM as an external link. It is the dot org "home of EVM" so its omission would be obvious. --Garrybooker 04:05, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Garrybooker. Solarapex 22:12, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Me too, I honestly think that the links are all ok. Pm master 23:01, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
Ok, I've restored the links, even the com is legitimate. Feel free to remove any link that you think is spam, but please explain. Thanks. Pm master 23:17, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

I love the page. The UK MoD link expired on 31 March. I think that I pointed to the correct page. Deltavictor (talk) 13:18, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup tags

I've put some tags on this article because it needs some re-writing. The lead reads like an advertisement and uses inappropriate abbreviations and slash marks:

"Earned Value Management (EVM) is a project management technique that measures forward progress objectively. EVM has the unique ability to combine measurements of technical performance (i.e., accomplishment of planned work), schedule performance (i.e., behind/ahead of schedule), and cost performance (i.e., under/over budget) within a single integrated methodology. EVM provides an early warning of performance problems while there is time for corrective action. In addition, EVM improves the definition of project scope, prevents scope creep, communicates objective progress to stakeholders, and keeps the project team focused on achieving progress."

Also, the latter part of the article tends to read like a set of instructions. This might be more appropriate for Wikibooks than Wikipedia. Hope this helps! --Busy Stubber 03:21, 18 October 2007 (UTC)