Federal IT Capital Planning and Investment Control (with CD)

CHAPTER 11

Using Earned-Value Management to Control Cost and Schedule Variance

The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.

—SUN TZU, THE ART OF WAR, 6TH CENTURY BC

Problems occur in projects for many reasons, including overly ambitious initial cost and schedule estimates, contracting problems, midstream changes to the project scope, problems installing hardware and systems software, staffing turnover, or coding and development complexity. These are but a few examples; there are myriad reasons why projects fall behind schedule and run over budget.

A primary source of project failures has been the lack of transparency; i.e., problems ...