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Earned Value Management

Earned Value Management (EVM) is a set of business best practices focusing on a combination of processes, people, and tools for enterprise project planning and control. Earned value (EV) is a means of putting a monetary value on project status to enable companies to measure project health.

If an agency wishes to have funding from the government, the agency and its contractors must both use a valid Earned Value Management System (EVMS), which provides a sound basis for problem identification, corrective action, and management re-planning.

The EVM process integrates scope, schedule, cost, a performance measurement baseline, and earned value. It is an industry standard way to:

  • Integrate scope, schedule, and cost into a baseline against which accomplishments can be measured
  • Measure the progress of a project
  • Forecast the completion date and final cost of a project
  • Provide schedule and budget variances along the way

Earned value for completed tasks is equal to the total budget for those tasks. Budgets are established at the task level and as work progresses, the budget for each task is earned. For activities in progress, you can use a number of methods for objectively measuring earned value. The theory behind these methods is to multiply the budget by a percentage complete to calculate the earned value. For activities not yet begun, the earned value is zero.

By putting a dollar value on project status, earned value enables companies to measure project health throughout the life cycle of a project. Low earned value can act as an early detection mechanism, giving a company time to implement effective corrective action.