Earned Value Management or EVM has gained significant traction amongst various industry verticals to be more productive and creative amongst various team members in an organization. Budget and Deadlines are the most important parameters of a project, thus it requires agile management techniques to successfully complete them on time. The time for guessing project timelines has come to an end and is being replaced by clear goals and scope, better planning and more using Earned Value Management. It helps owners stay on time and on budget.

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Let’s scan through some of its benefits and understand the essentials of EVM

Project control is one of the main factors in determining the success or failure of a project. It is also essential for measuring project performance along the entire lifecycle of the project. Early warnings in a project execution can mitigate errors through corrective action. This is where Earned Value Management is used as a powerful technique to monitor and control cost performance and time for a project. This technique uses specific metrics or parameters to measure project accomplishments. The idea is to keep track of the current stage of the project against proposed timelines and projections. Any adjustment in the timeline can be added and analyzed to make the necessary adjustments for exceptional project outcomes.

1 Plan Effectively

For EVM to work,  project teams need to spend a lot of time planning baselines or proposed goals for time and budget in real-time. A systematic view of the project from start to finish needs to be done to increase clarity amongst various stakeholders and organizations. There are three key parameters that need to be evaluated for a project in EVM i.e. Planned Value, Actual Cost, and Earned Value.

• Planned value or also called as Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS) is a time-phased budget baseline that is defined on the basis of the baseline schedule
• Actual Cost or AC is the cumulative amount of money spent at a given time or date. This is also called as Actual Cost of Work Performed
• The Earned Value is the amount that was proposed to perform work that was actually done at a given date. It is also called the Budgeted Cost of Work Performed(BCWP)

2 Maintain Clarity & Simplicity

EVM removes human assumption by maintaining objectivity on the project status. What we mean by project status is what has been completed at the present point in time against what was proposed at the start of the project. If a team is unable to finish the proposed tasks in a given timeline, then it would actually show up in terms of data, this means the team has come up short of the given timeline. This shows stakeholders if the proposed timeline was achievable or unachievable. To create simplicity for a project, a single platform needs to used by all the stakeholders of the project  This makes it easier to manage and forecast costs, timelines, and budgets for the complete project lifecycle.

3 Mitigate Issues and Enhance Responsibilities

Whilst using EVM, project problems can be detected very early on in all the phases. This enables all the stakeholders to create the necessary changes to get the project on track and as planned. Issues can slow down the complete project progress and create negative outcomes in the process.  In order to mitigate that, all the stakeholders need to take absolute accountability of the time and progress of the project to enhance productivity. The adoption of EVM in this phase can bring out unproductive personnel and get them moving to be on the same level as the others.

4 Predict and Boost Employee Productivity

The application of EVM is exemplified by predicting problems very early on in the planning stage. The most striking factor of EVM is it allows users to make calculated predictions based on strong numbers that can be used to develop accurate schedules and budget. This technique is very useful to mitigate setbacks at later stages of the project development. Owners and seniors can also improve employee productivity by monitoring project status and costs. A project ahead of schedule and furnished under budget can enhance employee morale and keep them working at the same pace.

Closing it on time and schedule, we can conclude that –

EVM can be leveraged to improve business decisions through precise project tracking and using various techniques to garner positive project outcomes. The results derived from EVM analysis serve as a backbone to evaluate deviations for cost, schedule and work scope. An EVM delivers exceptional information insights through project summaries and high-quality visuals in the form of graphics and reports for all the stakeholders to view and analyze. Read More…