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Categories: Cost Management
When using MS Project to track EV, how do you track actual hours worked?
Many different answers exist based on how you are doing the EV function. In my case, we don't use any of the EV tools built into MS Project, so we update the % complete and feed it into an EV tool. Our actual hours from the time charging system go in to the EV tool as well for ACWP.
There is an "actual work" column you can add in MS Project, which I'd bet is what the EV tools built into MS Project use for AC.
The fact of the matter is I don't really know, because the only time I tried to do EVM in MS Project it was waaay more complicated that it needed to be. The logistics of EVM should be easy if you are doing project management in a robust manner.
My recommendation: you can do EV in a spreadsheet. Just keep track of task status in MS Project, plug in actuals from your time keeping system, and calculate your EV metrics that way. You can do a lot more with the graphs and stoplight charts in Excel anyway, and the visual representations of EV are most useful in my opinion.
People make EV out to be much more complicated than it has to be. I prefer a "lean EV" approach using pretty much just the metrics I wrote about here.
Have you checked out my courses at http://learn.pmStudent.com? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on what I'm offering, and how I could do even better.
Posted on: September 11, 2010 08:23 PM |
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