ABSTRACT
Earned Value Management is a project management technique that has gained increasing industry acceptance. This acceptance process has taken over 50 years of scrutiny and prodding, mostly by the Department of Defense and Federal agencies with their contractors. Evidence shows that Earned Value (EV) provides one of the most effective and meaningful status analysis tools available today to measure and report project cost, schedule, and performance. The technique has the unique ability to combine cost, time, and scope completion measurements within a single integrated status parameter set. This chapter describes some variations of the EV system that address peculiarities or shortcomings inherent in the traditional EV metrics. It illustrates how Earned Schedule parameters can be produced both graphically and mathematically. Experience indicates that application of the EV model cannot be accomplished without a reasonable degree of operational maturity. EV methodology offers an integrated system for tracking project cost, schedule, and scope and is effective in influencing project performance.
