Using Earned Value Analysis for Project Management
One of the key challenges of project management is determining whether a project is delivering the expected value while the project is in progress. During the 1960s, the U.S. Department of Defence developed a technique called PERT (Project Estimation and Review Technique) that, together with CPM (Critical Path Method), gave an objective assessment of project progress and whether the project was on track.
Initially there was some resistance to using this method, as it was quite cumbersome, and it went through some revisions until it became Earned Value Management as we know it today. In the 1980s, the construction and engineering industries were the first to adopt EVM for project management, and it gradually became part of the toolset recommended for Scrum and was incorporated as an ANSI EIA standard 748-A, which was published in 1998, which means it is still a relatively new approach
Earned Value Analysis (EVA) – the Theory Behind it
The objective of EVA is to measure a project according to the interaction between the project scope, the resources (or costs) and the time (or effort) put into it in order to deliver the final product. This is the classic project management “triangle” and applies both to traditional and agile projects. The fundamental difference between the two approaches is that scope is fixed and known in a classic project, while time and costs are variable, while an agile project has the inverse approach. As Agile is designed for change, the unknown is the scope, while time and costs are fixed.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course:
Course Contents
Section 1: Agile Project Management
Section 2: Using the Agile Manifesto to Deliver Change
Section 3: The 12 Agile Principles
Section 4: The Agile Fundamentals
Section 5: The Declaration of Interdependence
Section 6: Agile Development Frameworks
Section 7: Introduction to Scrum
Section 8: Scrum Projects
Section 9: Scrum Project Roles
Section 10: Meet the Scrum Team
Section 11: Building the Scrum Team
Section 12: Scrum in Projects, Programs & Portfolios
Section 13: How to Manage an Agile Project
Section 14: Leadership Styles
Section 15: The Agile Project Life-cycle
Section 16: Business Justification with Agile
Section 17: Calculating the Benefits With Agile
Section 18: Quality in Agile
Section 19: Acceptance Criteria and the Prioritised Product Backlog
Section 20: Quality Management in Scrum
Section 21: Change in Scrum
Section 22: Integrating Change in Scrum
Section 23: Managing Change in Scrum
Section 24: Risk in Scrum
Section 25: Risk Assessment Techniques
Section 26: Initiating an Agile Project
Section 27: Forming the Scrum Team
Section 28: Epics and Personas
Section 29: Creating the Prioritised Product Backlog
Section 30: Conduct Release Planning
Section 31: The Project Business Case
Section 32: Planning in Scrum
Section 33: Scrum Boards
Section 34: Sprint Planning
Section 35: User Stories
Section 36: User Stories and Tasks
Section 37: The Sprint Backlog
Section 38: Implementation of Scrum
Section 39: The Daily Scrum
Section 40: The Product Backlog
Section 41: Scrum Charts
Section 42: Review and Retrospective
Section 43: Scrum of Scrums
Section 44: Validating a Sprint
Section 45: Retrospective Sprint
Section 46: Releasing the Product
Section 47: Project Retrospective
Section 48: The Communication Plan
Section 49: Formal Business Sign-off
Section 50: Scaling Scrum
Section 51: Stakeholders
Section 52: Programs and Portfolios