pmStudent

What is the fiscal responsiblity of the project manager anyway?

Are we just supposed to deliver projects within budget? Is that the extent of our responsibility?

No

Look, there are plenty of ways to manage projects.

Some of them involve a ton of paperwork, and some involve just what adds value to the end user.

Some build in a certainty of tons of rework by planning for detailed design months or even years before development, and some plan on progressive elaboration after formulating a solid start-up plan to get a clear idea of the end goals and project constraints.

Ask Yourself

I challenge you and myself. Let's ask ourselves as we go about our working day to stop and think about our own activities and those of our team members.

Do those activities add value? Which activities could we do without or do better. Are we getting the 'bang for our buck'.

Do we run on our fuel of incoming investment dollars like a shiny new hybrid compact sedan, or a gas-guzzling Hum-Vee?

And in the final analysis, does your project either 1) save money for the organization or 2) make money for the organization? Do you measure ROI in a rigorous way? If not, how can you even tell?

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.