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Track 2000
Earned Value ...what value ?
The traditional approach to project tracking and reporting involves three related concepts:
- the estimated effort and cost of the task;
- the actual effort and cost expended at time of tracking;
- the estimated remaining effort and cost at time of tracking.
Using these simple concepts, the project manager and team agree to review or track on a regular basis [e.g. weekly] the tasks undertaken during the tracking period. Then depending upon the various measures such as percentage complete and estimated effort to complete, the project manager, team member and various stakeholders are able to determine the status of the project .. or so the theory goes.
Let's assume that Mary has one task estimated to take 5 days that was scheduled to commence on Wednesday and be completed the following Tuesday. Let's also assume that the agreed tracking process occurs on Friday at 4.30 pm.
As shown in Figure 1, by Friday, Mary would have completed 60% of the effort and cost estimated for the task [assuming accurate estimation and no other unscheduled activities for Mary]. This also means that Mary has 40% of the effort and cost remaining to be completed by her deadline. Commercial project scheduling tools such as Microsoft Project, Artemis and Project Management Workbench provide the capability of displaying actual progress visually and also include more advanced [?] project tracking techniques such as Earned Value Analysis which are variations on the % complete model.
Fig 1. Project tracking [theory]
As any project professional will understand, there are significant conceptual and practical problems with this approach.