Book Review: Measuring Time

  Estimating   Stakeholder Management   ProjectsAtWork  

Based on extensive analysis of three competing earned value management methods, a new book summarizes the merits of each. Here, an EVM practitioner reviews “Measuring Time, Improving Project Performance Using Earned Value Management.”

This review first appeared in The EVM Newsletter published by Management Technologies and is reprinted here with permission.

In the past decade, three emerging concepts for the use of EVM data in estimating project duration (and thus project’s estimated completion date) have been proposed: Planned Value method, Earned Duration, and Earned Schedule. Mario Vanhoucke, in concert with Stephan Vandevoorde and others, performed academic research on these concepts using complex project modeling and Monte Carlo methods. The resulting book “Measuring Time, Improving Project Performance Using Earned Value Management” is a summary of their research effort.

“Measuring Time” is not a textbook on EVM. It is a thorough discussion about their research methods and analysis of their results. This book provides the reader insight into how the research was conducted, but also when each of the three competing project duration algorithms appears to work best. It also provides a useful concepts for others considering research in the analysis of project performance using numerous and complex models of project activity networks.

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