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- Earned Value Management (RSS) (12)
- Estimation and Pricing (RSS) (14)
- Older Topics (RSS) (32)
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- People Skills (RSS) (12)
- Understanding ourselves (RSS) (2)
Earned Value Management
Applying the principles of Earned Value Management to software projects, for a more accurate understanding of where the project is really at. The emphasis is on “lite” Earned Value, for ease-of-use.
With Earned Value, you are much less likely to “kid yourself” about the true state of the project (and other people are less likely present unrealistic status to you).
Encyclopedia Article now on Sale
After some delay, my Encyclopedia Article on Earned Value is now available here. The article aims to be
An accessible and comprehensive introduction to Earned Value (EV). [It] makes extensive use of graphical charts, instead of mathematical formulae, and is suitable for readers with no prior knowledge of
Key Resources
Here’s a brief summary of the key Earned Value resources on this blog:
- Earned Value in two sentences: Earned Value in a Nutshell
- Introduction, from a Agile perspective: Agile Charts
- Introduction, from a classic Earned Value Management (aerospace/DoD) perspective: Software Tech News article (was
Converting Apples to Oranges
There are two common errors when forecasting the final cost of a project. One is to compare actual cost with planned cost. The other is to compare actual progress with planned progress. Both are wrong.
Earned Value teaches us that the only valid measure is to compare actual… Read more
Rules of the Green Line
I draw usually draw Earned Value charts with the cost (AC) line in red, and the progress (EV) line in green. In this post, I’m going to outline some basic rules for getting a good “green line”. The recommendations in this post are for people doing “lite” Earned Value as… Read more
Encyclopedia Article
This page provides shortcuts to my Earned Value article in the Encyclopedia of Software Engineering.
- Link to online copy. As of 27 June 2011, you can purchase just the EV article (without having to buy the whole encyclopedia.)
- Hard copy of the whole encyclopedia (about 120 articles on
Recent Earned Value Posts of Interest
Glen Alleman posted on the difficulty (or otherwise) of the maths in EVM, and several of us commented. He followed that with an example in which the maths is very simple, which I quite liked as an introduction to Earned Value.
Marcin Niebudek wrote an article, in which… Read more
Speaking on Earned Value at NZ Computer Society Conference
I’ll be speaking at the New Zealand Computer Society’s 50th Anniversary Conference, on the topic of Earned Value Management.
I’m looking forward to being part of an interesting conference, and hopefully helping to lift the profile of EVM in New Zealand.
( The abstract’s reference… Read more
Earned Value in a Nutshell
I’ve been looking for a way to describe the “essence” of Earned Value Management (EVM). How can I describe the core of what EVM is about – without resorting to an impenetrable jungle of acronyms?
This is particularly important when describing it to people outside EVM’s traditional strongholds of defense… Read more
Does our intuition fail us?
Why do so many projects seem to be OK, but, when you get near the end, they turn out not to be OK after all? Everyone thought you were going to make the target date, but at the last minute… well, no you couldn’t.
I’d like to suggest an answer. … Read more
Agile Charts Part II – The EVM Perspective
I was recently invited to write an article on agile-style EVM charts for Software Tech News, a publication of the US Department of Defense. The audience was the traditional EVM community within the DoD, so I wrote the article from a traditional EVM perspective. By way of background,… Read more