(^146) 97 Things Every Project Manager Should Know
Can Earned Value and Velocity Coexist on Reports?
Barbee Davis, MA, PHR, PMP
Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.
SoFTWARE DEvEloPERS ARE InCREASIngly CERTAIn that a more agile,
flexible approach to creating software is the best way to produce high-quality,
working features that solve customer problems and provide business value.
However, project management offices (PMOs) are continuing to develop pro-
cedures and train project managers on more traditional approaches that work
successfully in many non–information technology areas of the corporation.
Is there a way to blend the reporting between the two factions, so that upper
management can have matching metrics from both areas? Yes. Sort of.
If you are new to earned value, it is a numeric tracking of progress and the
business value of that progress on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. In
an over-simplistic explanation, ignoring the cost factors, the project manager
(and other stakeholders) define requirements and estimate the amount of time
it will take to do the work of the project. These estimates are converted into a
schedule.
Let’s say the reporting time period was one week and the project team esti-
mated it could do 40 predefined tasks in that week. Friday afternoon, the team
reports its actual progress. If it got all the tasks finished in those 40 hours, it
“earned” 40 hours worth of value (EV). It had estimated, or planned, 40 hours’
worth of value (PV). EV–PV=SV, or schedule variance. In this case, the team
had zero schedule variance.
However, if the team got behind, the schedule would be behind and other
workers down the line would need to be alerted. If the team finished early,