Earned Value Analysis: the conference
Ah, Earned Value Analysis. If only I loved it enough to attend this 2-day conference about it next week. Or cared enough about it. Or even understood why the majority of PMs I know don’t bother with it at all.
Still, if you are an EV aficionado, EVA14 is for you. According to the organisers, “Earned Value provides the levels of control and transparency required for project success and survival in these difficult days. It should be noted that EV specialists and projects using EV continue to thrive.” Where, exactly?
With speakers from Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems, and the 2012 Olympic Programme, the emphasis is on large projects, big-scale things that need the extra control that EV can bring.
The conference is also bizarrely linked to the campaign to get a statue of Sir Keith Park on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. I completely support that aim. It’s far better than Antony Gormley’s idea to fill the space.
As I’m not attending the conference I’ll have to take it for granted that Stephen Carver from Cranfield University will make the link and explain how we can learn from history, in the penultimate lecture of the conference.
The conference will be held on 9 and 10 June at the Armourers’ Hall, Moorgate, in the City of London. Let me know if you’re going!
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???
>>Where, exactly?
I guess on the big government accounts. I have worked predominantly on government accounts for the latter half of this decade and they have just heard of the “new” buzzword of EVA.
What they fail to realize is that EVA requires a full breakdown and analysis of work so that you can get meaningful results out of it. The problem with big government accounts is that there are so many change controls (one had over 100 major changes) early on that you never really get to the point where you can use eva until you are 2/3rds the way through the delivery!
Even though EVM is part of what I teach for the PMP exam I must admit that I haven’t used it myself. The reason for this is very simple: Throughout my career I have managed small to medium sized projects that lasted up to about 9 months.
Half of my career I worked as a consulting PM and I can tell you that my customers would not have wanted to spend the additional money to add EVM onto these projects.
The other half of my career I worked in large companies where the projects where of such a specific strategic importance that EVM did not matter. The projects had to get done fast and efficiently. The project cost was of no importance. So why add EVM “overhead” when there are other, less complex ways to ensure that we are still on track?
This much said, however, I do agree very much with a statement from Quentin Fleming (he is “Mr. Earned Value”) who told me that projects usually fail in step 1 of Earned Value: Define your scope.
EVM is a series of practices that include work definition, planning (schedule and cost), work assignment, cost collection, discrete measurement of accomplishment and forecasting of cost and schedule at completion.
The reason for all of the detail in work definition is to make sure that the proper work can be assigned at the proper time to the responsible manager and to identify changes appropriately. If your project is not big enough to require tracking this, then that part may seem overly burdensome.
If you have standard practices in place that provide complete work definition and you can easily tell the responsible manager who can answer the question “why did that happen”, again EVM may seem burdensome.
If, on the other hand, your projects are not finishing on time or budget and you did not have any visibility into that end, I suggest you investigate EVM. EVM provides excellent visibility in to project progress against the baseline and forecast of completion cost and schedule information.
Like any other tool, it can be used well or poorly. It will not stop a project from being late or overrun. What it is designed to do is provide visibility soon enough, at a level of detail that allows root ccause analysis so that effective management decisions can be made in time to minimize negative impacts.
As to the size, here in the USA, the government requirements vary but generally any project of $20 million or larger will use EVM to manage and report to the cusotmer. Some agencies apply the requirement to projects as small as $2 million.