Assessing the health of a project or program

What Is Earned Value Management?

• Earned Value Management (EVM in short), is by far the most powerful method for finding the health of a project or a program.
• It creates a single unit of measure across the organization and across the projects and that unit of measure is “Currency”. When everything is measured in the unit of money than each and everything becomes measurable and even comparable.
• This system has been in place with all the biggest success stories as far as projects go.
• This system tracks the project in three steps viz., Status report (Where we stand today vis a vis the project in comparison with the plan) followed by the Progress report (What have we achieved so far in comparison with the plan) and finally the Forecast (What do we need to do now for the future of this project).
• This system by far the best “Dash Board” for the projects within the organization.
• The tracking system that has been propounded by the Project Management Institute, USA.

Project Tracking Without EVM?

These are just some of the problems that we face when we conduct projects and programs without the EVM:

• No single unit of measure for the projects hence each project is measured differently.
• Too much time spent in finding the health of the project
• Too many meetings and various levels of meeting just to make a project report
• Projects cannot be compared with one another thus we are not sure if we, as an organization, are getting better in project management or getting worse
• Without EVM we suffer from “Laws Of Diminishing Returns” because we cannot fully and accurately measure the productivity of people and align it with what is the speed we require to finish the work.
• Too much “On productive Overtime” as the team, unable to forecast accurately, does not really work scientifically to meet a deadline thus resorting to undue pressure and extended working hours.
• Wasted efforts as the existing system does not track the productive hours of the project personnel
• Unable to predict problems earlier on thereby unable to take preventive decisions
• No proper historical records of project in a form that could be actually used for learning in the next projects

EVM Establishment Approach

• A basic fact finding study would be conducted
• A detailed proposal would be given to the organization based on the fact-finding study.
• Post approval of the proposal a detailed study would be conducted to understand all the environmental factors, domain related factors, existing human capital, existing processes maturity, national regulations, HR policies, technical challenges and other industrial and cultural challenges.
• The EVM would be rolled out on a pilot set of projects or program
• The staff / key stakeholders would than be trained on the EVM and shown the benefits of the system, to create a buy in.
• EVM dashboards and reporting system would be created and responsibilities fixed.
• EVM dashboard presented to the strategic stakeholders and decision makers.