QSO 420 ( week 2 )

Be sure to respond to two of your peers' postings. How could you expand upon their descriptions

and assessments of their chosen criteria?

Refer to the Discussion Rubric PDF for directions on completing this discussion.

________________________________________________________________________

Ryan Batey

The 32 EVMS Guidelines incorporate best business practices for project management systems

that have proven to provide strong benefits for project planning and control. It is utilized to

assess cost, schedule, and technical progress on programs to support joint situational awareness

and informed decision making. Some may refer to it as realistic project planning because it is

used as a baseline to assess project performance over time by comparing the actual work

completed against the projected schedule.

Each of the 32 criteria are important in their own right and merit. I chose to focus on #23 because

it is interesting has a few important factors that could have a significant impact on a project. On a

monthly basis the differences between planned and actual performance as well as planned and

actual cost performance are identified in order to provide reasoning behind the variation of

results each month. It is a difference between seeing the numbers and understanding the

numbers, so this is a very important part of ensuring the project is on track and things that could

get it on track should it be off course. Whenever a project exceeds either a schedule variance or a

cost variance from a previously set baseline parameter, typically called a variance threshold, the

project must automatically perform an analysis to determine why the acceptable tolerances were

exceeded. (Flemming and Coppleman 2016) Labor, material, and direct cost assessed, which

allow for the variances in performance to be analyzed. By using this criteria project managers are

able to come up with plans for mitigation for future risks of the project when it comes to cost and

schedule. One of the flaws or possible shortcomings of the criterion is that if all needed

information is not available it could bottleneck the process. Also if the information given is

inaccurate it could also cause major issues with assessing the performance, as well as, providing

effective mitigation strategies.

Fleming, Q., & Koppelman, J. (2016). Earned Value Project Management (4th ed.). Independent

Publishers Group (Chicago Review Press).

https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9781935589419

______________________________________________________________________

William Martindale

When reviewing the (32) Earned Value Management system criteria, I had a hard time picking

one that I thought was more important than the others, but I decided to go with EVM criterion

#22. According to Fleming & Koppleman (2016) “this criterion is one which clearly separates

earned value management from the traditional approach of measuring cost performance by

simply relating the planned costs to the actual costs”. The goal of this criterion is to track the

project’s costs monthly or in real time allowing management to see how the project is performing

throughout its life cycle. By understanding where the project stands, management can better see

how to make adjustments to improve the overall performance. This criterion will help create an

early warning sign that will help create an early warning sign that will help mitigate budget

overages. In terms of flaws or shortcomings this criterion does not naturally have one that I can

identify, however if there is an error or a delay in the accounting department, costs could

potentially be inaccurate. This inaccuracy could show overruns or underruns and give a false

view of the project. To avoid this a good plan and communication between the project team and

accounting department will be required. Beyond delayed accounting this criterion could also be

affected by how performance is measured. According to Fleming & Koppleman (2016) “the

difficulties typically experienced with this criteria group often includes too much “subjective”

measurement of actual performance, thus allowing individuals to put a “positive spin” on adverse

results and artificially improve the progress being reported to senior management”. In

construction specifically piping construction a good example of this is weighing progress based

on pipe sizes. On past projects where this system of progress measurement was used, foremen

could focus on installing as much small-bore piping as possible to inflate their numbers. In the

front end this looked great but as the project progressed, completion would fall off rapidly

because it would take much longer to install the larger piping spools due to the smaller piping

being in the way and the number of resources required to complete larger bore piping.

References

Fleming, Q., & Koppelman, J. (2016). Earned Value Project Management (4th ed.). Independent

Publishers Group (Chicago Review Press).

https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9781935589419