Most projects that perform weekly earned value analysis implement a process called rolling wave. This process expands the data to weekly periods for a window; typically one month prior and three months forward. This reduces the time phased budget data compared to what would be stored if the entire project were stored weekly.
When a rolling wave calendar is defined in Cobra, month end is determined by the flagged periods in Calendar Set 1 of the rolling wave calendar. Therefore, the Period End Date referred to in the Automatically Create Explain Variance Workflows field on the Thresholds tab refers to the flagged periods in Calendar Set 1 and not the status date of the Explanation of Variance. PM Compass calculates the current period by using the last Calendar Set 1 month-end period.
The last month end, according to Calendar Set 1, is 2/22/2013. The current status date on the Explanation of Variance is 3/8/2013. If the number of days after the period end date (month end) when scheduled explanation of variances are created is set to 8, the Explanation of Variances (EoV) should be created 8 days after the month end date; that is 2/22 + 8 = 3/2/2013. If today is March 2, PM Compass creates the EoV's.
Set up project-level thresholds
Include a project in the scheduled Explanation of Variance creation process
Set up a project for explain variance
Automatically create Explanation of Variances
View information about the project Thresholds tab