Project Management

Painting by Numbers: Understanding Earned Benefit-Value from a Budget View to Benefit Focus

The presentation starts by analyzing the problems that project managers face due to differing stakeholder expectations. It explains that Earned Value only addresses part of this problem. Given this understanding, a seemingly minor change to the basis of the Earned Benefit definition is shown to deliver a general solution to the growing need for projects to take responsibility for addressing the contribution from the project to the strategic benefits required by the business. To show the origins and the intent of this approach, the concept has been given the name “Earned Benefit-Value”. The steps in planning and applying Earned Benefit-Value in both predictive and Agile projects is explained. A realistic numerical example is used to explain this approach in detail.