The EV Meal

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  Cost Management   Earned Value Management   Requirements Management   Schedule Management   Scheduling   Scope Management  

When looking at earned value management, it’s simple to see how it could be connected to agile project management or similar incremental project management strategies. By carrying out project tasks in a methodical and piecemeal basis, the value of development and implementation can be more easily evaluated and appreciated.

The perception (and potential reality) is that utilizing EVM gives you the ability to make projects get done more quickly since it is broken out into bite sizes; it can also create an atmosphere of productivity when incentives are attached to mini-goal attainment. When considering the prospect that a project might be cancelled or reconfigured before completion, the ability to attain smaller assignment goals makes it an easier strategy to adapt to and turn around and repurpose.

An EVM project that is “broken” before its completion is easier to reconstruct and make useful. Like a box of mosaic tiles, these components have greater potential to be reconstructed into a different finished project or incorporated into another project. There is also a financial advantage should this breakdown occur in that it is easier to determine how much of the budget was consumed based on the plan and costs incurred at the breaking point.

Increments and Incentives
When a project utilizing EVM is broken out into increments, it also provides a …

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