Project Management For Dummies, 6th Edition

Chapter 19

Monitoring Project Performance with Earned Value Management

IN THIS CHAPTER

Tracking the terms and formulas that go with earned value management

Putting earned value management to use with your project

Estimating an activity’s earned value

Because you’re reading this chapter, we assume you’re looking for a way to assess your ongoing project performance. Earned value management (EVM), also called earned value analysis (EVA), is a technique that helps determine your project’s schedule status and cost status from your resource expenditures alone. EVM is particularly useful for identifying potential problems on larger projects.

To get the most from this chapter, you need to have some prior experience or knowledge in project management. Here, we help you better understand EVM by defining it, discussing how to determine and interpret variances, and showing you how to use it in your project.

Defining Earned Value Management

Monitoring your project’s performance involves determining whether you’re on, ahead of, or behind schedule and on, under, or over budget. But just comparing your actual expenditures with your budget can’t tell you whether you’re on, under, or over budget ...