Moving to EVM: Getting Buy In

 

So you want to move to using earned value. As a way of communicating project status, the charts are visual, the picture becomes clear and it’s a great way of explaining progress. Once you understand what you are looking at then you can get a great deal of information from a single report.

However, you’re probably a bit daunted by the move because EVM has a reputation as being difficult to understand. You might have learned the theory as part of your PMP® exam preparation but you might not have looked at those formulae since.

If you’re convinced that EVM is the right move for you and your team, it’s the same as implementing any new way of working: get the buy in, define what you want to do, plan it, implement it, review.

Let’s focus on that first point, getting buy in, for a moment.

If your team aren’t behind you, actively supporting you, not just passively nodding in a meeting while at the same time dreading having to do it in real life, then you’re going to find it a lot harder to switch to a culture of using earned value.

This isn’t news: it’s simply change management. One of the biggest issues I think we as project managers have is doing change to ourselves. If we think of these initiatives as a project, with all the associated project management disciplines including change management, then we’re going to have much better success rates.

Getting buy in from the team

So how do you get buy in from the people doing the job?

First, identify who is going to be involved in using EVM or interpreting the results. These are your stakeholders.

Then start your programme of communication and change management. For example, identify their concerns. If it was me, I’d be worried about the maths and what I’d actually have to be doing each time I put together a report. I’d want clear guidance on what was required.

I’d also be worried about the accuracy of the reports, knowing that my current project’s scope and schedule aren’t yet solid enough to do any meaningful reporting from. How is that going to work? At what point in a project is EV going to kick in? And what if I never get my schedule baselined? (Because, you know, it’s one of those projects. Don’t judge, OK?)

Identifying and addressing concerns goes a huge way towards gaining the support of the team. If they feel like they can manage the change (whatever it is) and have confidence that it won’t be as awful as they are possibly expecting, then they’re going to feel better about the process of getting there.

A big chunk of change management is communication, and you can keep the team on side far more solidly if you keep them abreast of what’s happening. It’s not good to dangle the carrot of EVM and then provide no updates for three months. That just breeds uncertainly because when people don’t know the truth they have a habit of making stuff up to fill the gap. Not maliciously, but something heard on the grapevine becomes a “fact” once it’s been through half a dozen people at the water cooler. So keep the communication channels open. My book, Communicating Change, has a number of ways to do that if you need some suggestions.

Getting buy in from above

Everyone has different preferences when it comes to taking in information. In our office, a couple of teams have their personal preferences displayed on their desks following a team building event, so you know when approaching them to lead with facts, emotion, detail or something else.

As a result of personal preferences, the way you gain buy in from senior managers is going to be different depending on the person. The exec who likes facts is going to want to know that it’s going to deliver standardised project reporting, improve forecasting by X% and give us the data to better control project performance. (Or whatever, you get my drift.)

The exec who prefers to understand the human impact might be influenced by the story of a single project which, using EV, turned in better results because the project manager could more easily control the work and people on the team had better visibility of progress against cost.

Unfortunately that means that there isn’t a magic formula that I can give you for gaining buy in at senior levels, but in my experience all execs do have one thing in common: they like solutions that save time, save money and increase profitability. Standardisation and repeatability are also good selling points. In other words, initiatives that improve project management maturity aren’t particularly important, unless you dress them in the language that business leaders want to hear.

Then you have a powerful story.

What has been your experience of implementing EVM? Did you struggle to get buy in from people? I’d love to hear how it worked out for you.