Earned Value application

[New Earned Value]

I am new to Earned Value and am trying to determine how to apply it to my
project. I have a 38,000 hour project which runs for 1 year. When I created
my MS Project plan, I entered my tasks and placed dependencies on the tasks
purely based on the fixed number of resources that I have. So, person A
would work task 1, then task 2, then task 3. Person B would work task 4,
then task 5, then task 6. That approach set start/end dates for the task.

In reality, person A does a little bit of task 1, task 2, task 3, then goes
back to do some more on task 1, task 2, task 3. When I try to apply Earned
Value, it doesn't seem to work correctly. For my first week, I only had 40
hours of work that was scheduled to be completed. It was all for task 1.
However, when I entered my actuals which showed that 40.25 hours of work were
completed against task 1-3, my earned value seems to calculate weirdly.

My BCWS was 40 (which seems right to me), my ACWP was 40.25 (which also
seems right based on my actuals), but the BCWP was 124.02.

First, I don't understand how the BCWP was calculated.

Second, what would be the best way of applying earned value analysis to this
type of project?

 

[John M.]

You covered quite a large footprint in your question, so let's see how much I
can answer in one response:

1. Task dependencies should be reserved for true deliverable/activity
dependencies and not for scheduling preference based on resource constraints.
If you have three tasks that could all be started right now (ignoring
resource constraints), then they should not have dependencies on each other.
This allows you to more flexibility in your schedule as you assign resources.
The leveling process for overallocated resources is where Task 2 would be
delayed until after Task 1 and Task 3 would be delayed until after Task 2.

2. If the reality of the work is that three tasks are worked in parallel,
perhaps you should change the WBS pattern that you are using in order to
better represent how the work will be performed. An example would be to
define three iterations of work. Each iteration would include completing a
portion of your current Task 1, Task 2, and Task

3. At the end of the day, it is good to have discrete tasks that begin and
end in a series, so that the manager can tell the resources which task to
work on and in what order. Having tasks in parallel results in defering
control to the resource and essentially eliminates the "plan" component of
the work plan.

4. The BCWP for each task can be calculated based on % complete (duration)
or physical % complete. It is calculated as the percentage multiplied by the
budget at complete for the task. You can set a default within the
Calculation Tab (Tools --> Options...) which will be used for all new tasks.
Each task has the Earned Value Method as an attribute on the Advanced Tab of
the task information.

5. The earned values are also dependent upon the status date (Project -->
Project Information). You may want to check the help file as it explains
this.

Hope this is a good start.

John M.

 

[Jim Aksel]

Continuing on John's point. Work should be planned around Program Events,
Signifiant Accomplishments and Accomplishment Criteria. Each of these is
another layer of the onion. Each of these needs to have defined entry and
exit criteria. Once these are defined, you can assign resources and work
estimates. In short, the WBS is based on deliverables and your schedule
should be constructed to follow your process.

Since you will obviously be overloading human resources by doing it this
way, you can rely on Project to resource level for you. The help section on
Resource Leveling is a good place to start. This will help you identify
resource shortfalls and if the schedule is actually tenable with your current
resource mix.