Does Earned Value Work on All Projects?

The joke about project management as well has Earned Value is that we use the same words to describe a mouse as we do a herd of elephants.

- Roger Kent in the January 2012 edition of PM Network, Feedback page

Wow!  That is quite a statement.  I started reading this issue because I wanted to read the articles about Agile (more on that in future posts) but this pearl almost made me choke on my sandwich.

Project management is not a one size fits all activity; actually pretty much nothing is.  Project management is also not about dogma.  If someone needs to comfort themselves in project management fundamentalism I suggest they find something else to do.  You don't want to do EV?  Though, it is not because something is difficult for you to do that you just can forget about it.

As for the military saluting and doing as they’re told (another pearl from the same letter), I’ll take that as a compliment.  Soldiers get the job done.

I’ll go back to doing me EV on my crappy, short term, sub $1M, non-defense and non-aerospace project…

What do you think?  As always questions and comments are welcome.

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Comments

[Glen B. Alleman]

Perfect foil material. I'll post a response separately.

Who is the editor of this material. Roger has a PMP and should know better.

But since EV measures how the project is "earning it's budget," size doesn't matter.

And since knowing how much of someone elses money you're spending to produce an outcome, you'd think someone like Roger, with his PMP would have a process in place to capture actual cost on a periodic basis.

As a PM you'd think he'd like to know what the project will cost and when it is forecast to complete based on measures of physical percent complete.

[Patrick Richard]

Glen,

It is possible indeed that it was edited in such a way as to make it controversial to stir up the pot.

If so, I must say I'm disappointed at PM Network, the shining beacon of PMI...

Doing EV should not be seen as a chore; instead it should be seen as a confirmation that your project is still on the straight and narrow. Of course it could be heading for the ditch, but even that you’d like to know ahead of times. I’m pretty sure you agree with me, even outside the context of heavily regulated projects.

[Patrick Richard]

I just peeked at the March 2012 PM Network and Saul Ackovitz feels the same way as Glen and I.