Microsoft® Project 2007 Bible

Chapter 14. Analyzing Financial Progress

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Understanding earned value

• Evaluating cost information

• Making adjustments during the project

When you analyze the progress of your project, you must measure not only the progress or the schedule but also the progress based on the costs that you incur. In Microsoft Project, you measure the earned value of your project.

Understanding Earned Value

Earned value is the measurement that project managers use to evaluate the progress of a project based on the cost of work performed up to the project status date. When Project calculates earned value, by default it compares your original cost estimates to the actual work performed to show whether your project is on budget. You can think of earned value as a measurement that indicates how much of the budget should have been spent in comparison to the cost of the work performed thus far to the baseline cost for the task, resource, or assignment.

Note

You can calculate earned value by manually recording the Physical % Complete instead of letting Project calculate % Complete, which is actual duration divided by total duration.

To work with and use earned value information effectively, you must first perform the following tasks:

• Save a baseline for your project

• Assign resources with costs to tasks in your project

• Complete some work on your project

Understanding earned value fields

The fields that appear as headings in the Earned Value report you saw in Chapter 13 also appear on various earned value tables. ...