There is a discussion on LinkedIn Earned Value Management group about how to use EV to manage a program in the enterprise IT domain. The domain of course is the Federal Government and all the reporting around the growing failure rate. This is one of those non-trivial topics that has been ongoing for decades.

The concept that Earned Value is the means of managing a program has several issues, not the least the of which EV uses past performance, that is some time 45 days old. The second issue is that EV uses Money as its unit of measure. The Schedule Variance (SV) and the Schedule Performance Index (SPI) is stated in units of Money, and translated into Time in a 1:1 relationship. This is course is not the case in practice.

But one point of view is to look at why programs get in trouble from the Earned Value paradigm independent of these anomalies:

• Inattention to budgetary responsibilities
• Work authorizations that are not always followed
• Issues with Budget and data reconciliation
• Lack of an integrated management system
• Baseline fluctuations and frequent replanning
• Current period and retroactive changes
• Improper use of management reserve
• EV techniques that do not reflect actual performance
• Lack of predictive variance analysis
• Untimely and unrealistic Latest Revised Estimates (LRE)
• Progress not monitored in a regular and consistent manner
• Lack of vertical and horizontal traceability cost and schedule data for corrective action
• Lack of internal surveillance and controls
• Managerial actions not demonstrated using Earned Value

For any or all of these issues, the source of the program failure can be traced to Earned Value. Actually the failure of Program Planning and Controls processes.

Original post created by: Herding Cats