Culture Shift:
Culture shift is essential – every Project Team must understand the working of EVM model. Also, culture shift needs to be managed and supported well
Accurate Planning, scheduling and costing of work packages:
Besides accurate WBS, accurate planning, scheduling and proper costing of work packages(PV) at frequency points of measurement is the first step towards successful EVM Implementation. Costing to include all the costs that will be incurred (Direct, Indirect, Fixed and Variable costs covering all resources including human resources)
Accurate measurement of work completed:
It is absolutely essential to measure the work completed(earned back ie EV) at each task level and at the project level either in terms of % of work scheduled, or absolute $ value
All costs incurred must be recorded:
To get a true picture of all Costs incurred (AC) between two frequency of measurement points, all costs – Direct, Indirect, Fixed and Variable incurred at every task level must be recorded.
Replanning the work and redrawing the baseline at every change:
Replanning the work at every change is critical. Use of automated tools will ease out this process.
Frequency of Measurement of EVM values:
Frequency of measurement of PV, EV and AC is critical. It must be optimum suiting the duration of the project, neither low nor high.
Recording of all Costs Daily/appropriate frequency:
It is absolutely essential to record all project costs on a daily basis or at an appropriate frequency in line with the Frequency of measurement of EVM values
This is very good post from a legend and role model for many colleagues like me, highlighting some of the important practices for success in Project management.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to add my two cents to the points about importance of measuring Earned value and redefining the baselines.
there is a human factor involved in the success of every good practice and there is a possibility of mockery of good practices as well.
There is a tendency to define the earned value to convenience of execution to show case more progress. the metrics are deliberately not defined with result link. in other words the PM's may not be honest to themselves. this is the reason why even in CMM5 level companies all compliances for PM best practices are met but the projects still fail.
In case of baselines, we in some of the earlier project executions faced an issue of inability to capture the data with desired granularity preferable at Task level without which the measures like effort variance only at higher level didnt help.