ABSTRACT
Perhaps the most common questions that a project manager will have to answer during the course of any project will be along the lines of ‘How are we doing? Are we still set to deliver on time? Shall we finish within budget?’ Getting answers to these questions will usually require a certain amount of analysis, especially on a large project. If progress is being monitored constantly against good critical path network data, then it should be fairly easy to answer the question about completion on time. At least, if any critical task is running late, then the project must be running late by that amount. But what about the costs? Provided that the organization has competent accountants and a good cost collection system, the actual expenditure to date (or at least to the end of the previous accounting period) should be known. But how can the costs incurred be related to the progress achieved? The answer to that question is usually more difficult to answer and is complicated on any project of significant size by huge amounts of work in progress. This chapter discusses some methods for examining the relationships between expenditure and achievement throughout the project life cycle and assessing the implications.
