The solution to this challenge? Always report the collected data accurately. By reporting any variances, an EVM analyst can provide the ability to quickly identify any positive or negative impacts to the program or circumstances that may deviate from the original plan.
Instead, LOE should only be used for tasks that are supportive in nature and or have no measurable delivery product. Break down work into smaller tasks that can be measured and show true performance of the work that is being done on a program. We also ensure that no matter what agency we are supporting, the various required standards and policies are being followed. If the project scope, schedule or budget is ill-defined, its goals and outcomes are vague, the Work Breakdown Structure WBS is incomplete, the AC collection system does not report costs timely, management exerts undue influence or distraction, or the time to properly setup data is not available, EVA may be a waste of time.
Ron Price, MBA, has extensive senior level experience in business, information technology, and education. Under his pen name Ron Gilster, Price has written over 40 books for several leading publishers on a topics ranging from business and finance to IT certifications to real estate. Share It. Earned Value. They cannot be created up front because the scope cannot be defined up front in sufficient detail.
That was why you needed an Agile mode in the first place! Still, one has to wonder how to integrate an Agile work effort into a larger, generally predictive DOD project where use of EVM reporting is contractually required. Bill, thanks for your comments and for sparking the topic in the first place. I LOVE your oil-slimed albatross metaphor. Hi Maxim, is your goal to determine how the team is doing vs. Or are you trying to determine if the project is a success? If the latter, I would meet with the team, the Product Owner and users or stakeholders.
I would ask about number of releases of working solutions over the last 90 days. I would evaluate whether customers are adopting the product, measure new feature usage or determine the ROI for new features. Project performance is the delivery of real value to real customers, IMHO. If the former, I would ask a PM to pick a color — red, amber or green.
And they will say green. I find this to be an unsatisfying answer. The issue here is that you are thinking in waterfall terms. Breath of fresh air. Hi Anthony, Thanks for sharing this perspective! I would like to put a perspective against it; as I do see value in EVM. Only we need to upgrade and make it more flexible. For example, in your example with the present for your wife. EVM does not fail, but your project setup. You do not involve your wife business in the creation of the outcomes.
They want to get involved in the creation and see value throughout the project; core principle of agile projects. EVM helps show value created along the way based on deliverables as outcomes. Curious about your feedback, happy to discuss further! I am not familiar with the agile process but have worked in an Engineering, Design and Supply Company for 25 years.
Agreed EV has nothing to do with cost. You can be earning your progress on time but still over running the budgets. We never compared this but do answer for the accrued costs.
Because most of our monies are on materials and the PO are committed but we are not invoiced until the vendor makes their milestones.
We used a 9 step procurement process using ISO project documentation as tangible triggers that release the milestone. We only use budgets to weigh the materials by cost. So Sox has it mandatory that the as sold is documented and used as the original budget. How do you coordinate free issue materials and fabricator completion dates if your schedule is not created to make the contractual delivery date; how do you know if there are delays caused by the client or small requests which will accumulate to a large amount of budget being spent not on the as sold scope.
I have found the most useful theory to use when reforecasting the project until completion is the waterfall effect. It gives you flexibility to make changes on the project but has a plan in place so there is something to measure the actual project exeuction against. If not, how do you give good feedback to proposals so that as each job is proposed, the project budgets are more in alignment with actual execution vs. The reason it usually fails is that very few real-world business stakeholders are capable of or willing to commit to assigning business value.
At companies in more rigid, mature or otherwise compliance driven industries, this is far less of an issue because all project investments require dollar-denominated quantification of expected benefits, making the EV calcs possible without disturbing anything scrum related. Especially when projects are run through fixed standing team value streams. You know how much the standing team costs per temporal period, you know the WACC for the firm, and you know the quantified benefits the project investment is expected to produce which itself is often a complex analysis on the business side.
I am excited to merge both Agile and EV on my current assignment. Those of us who fully understand the flexibility of EV recognize that EV and agile can complement each other, however, that is via an agile-ev method, not by using waterfall EV methodology on an agile program. Agile processes exist to deliver value to users as soon as possible and iteratively increase the value to users.
Agile processes exist because users usually do not know what they want or will value until they see it. How does failing early impact Earned Value? Agile is focused on users not customers. Customer write checks. Users have to use your product. For that reason alone, EVM is opposite of Agile. Agile exists to enable progress in the absence of complete requirements. In spite of all the articles claiming otherwise, EVM depends on having the entire scope of work at planning time.
The scope of work is determined by the requirements that Agile projects do not have. I have read about re-baselining whenever the project backlog changes using a change control board. Someone might say that those reviews are only needed in a Waterfall process. Try convincing your government customer that those formal reviews are not needed for Agile processes. The needs of customers check writers and executives are not well met by Agile. Once people start going to jail and companies are fined out of existence, nobody will ever mention Agile again in the context of government work.
Putting Agile on your resume will make you unemployable. Erik, thanks for that very detailed explanation, this helps paint a more complete picture of the utility of EVM to paying customers as well as to the need to adhere to it for Federal projects. If it was not a FAR requirement — would you still use it?
Thanks, Anthony. From a software developer point of view, I prefer Agile processes. My secret is in the planning. You could have the same project with the same deliverables, but one plan turns the project into a death march, and the other plan makes failure almost impossible.
If there are Contract Deliverables, I identify or small internal milestones that contribute to those deliverables. Many of the milestones are simple and easy to achieve like reviewing a documented and posting feedback or submitting a purchase order or documenting a trade-off analysis.
Few developers ever look at EV charts even if I post them somewhere. With Agile metrics, everyone on the team knows what everyone else is doing and what is getting done.
To answer your question: EVM has made me a corporate hero in the eyes of the executives, but it has done nothing to improve developer productivity of deliver more value to customers. I will keep using EVM as long as the executives want it. I will game the system so that there is no drama and everyone agrees the projects run smoothy.
Then the delivered weapons system will never be deployed or used because the people who wrote the Statement of Work at proposal time had no idea what the actual users wanted or needed.
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