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Categories: earned value
Have you used the Practice Standard for Earned Value Management? It’s another one of the documents and standards available to project managers who are members of PMI. Go to your members area and log in, then navigate to the standards section and you’ll be able to download a copy.
It’s a detailed guide to how to do earned value, but more than that, it also talks about scheduling elements that are so important to getting your project plans set up correctly from the beginning. Look at me, mixing up ‘schedule’ and ‘plan’ already. How many times have you heard ‘plan’ and known the person talking really means ‘schedule’ today?
Earned Value requires that you are all on the same page with terminology and it’s a good way to standardise your approach to managing project performance.
What’s in the standard?
The standard is a document that sits alongside the PMBOK® Guide and doesn’t replace it. You can use them both together. Think of the standard as a deep dive into how to make earned value work. Like all standards, it is not prescriptive in that it doesn’t tell you that you need to use certain software tools to do the processes. It’s up to you to work out the best ways to implement the guidance.
The standard covers the following areas:
- A general overview of EV: important for scene setting and context to help you decide if you really want to go ahead and implement EV on your projects
And then it goes through the process for running an earned value management, in exactly the same way as the PMBOK® Guide is laid out:
- Organise your project: the first process
- Assign responsibility so people take ownership for WBS elements
- Develop the schedule
- Establish the budget
- Determine the measurement methods you are going to use to track progress
- Establish the performance baseline
- Analyse project performance: this is the process where you track the project’s status and monitor performance
- Maintain the performance measurement baseline: in this process you review what is happening and course correct to bring the project back on track using rebaselining and change requests.
If you are used to using the PMBOK® Guide as a reference, then the format of the EVM standard will be familiar to you. Each section talks about the process as a whole, then covers the inputs, outputs and considerations, enabling you to map it to your current work.
There are some appendices that cover additional topics like how the standard was put together and how the subject of EV fits with risk management. There’s also a short system on deploying a full EVM system which is helpful if you are about to start software selection.
It’s much shorter than the PMBOK® Guide (thankfully!) so if you are wondering whether it’s worth diving into, I say go for it. What I liked about it is that it’s readable – in as far as any standard and set of processes is – and I felt like I could implement it if I wanted to. It’s not the same as the standard required if you are bidding for US federal contracts, but if you want a place to start with EV, then this is a comprehensive guide. Plus, it’s free to PMI members, so what have you got to lose?
I know that many PMP® students do worry about the earned value formulas and EV in general, especially if they don’t use the concepts day-to-day – and in my experience most of the people and companies I work with do not choose to use EV as a performance management method. So if you are going for the exam and want to build your confidence about EV, then this is a helpful read. It’s still basically a textbook though (maybe I find these things more interesting than the average person – certainly I’m the only one in my household who would pull out an EV book by choice).
The thing about EV is that you need to know a little about it to know that it is not relevant to your projects. It’s a topic worth learning about as a project manager if only so you can have the confidence that you and your PMO are making the right choice by not adopting this way of tracking performance.
Do you use EV on your projects? Let me know in the comments!
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Posted on: January 26, 2021 08:00 AM |
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