How to customize EVM in MSP Pro

[Michelle Moulliet]

Can anyone point me in the direction of some good guidance for how to
customize EVM calculations in MSP Professional?

Thanks!
Michelle

 

[Jim Aksel]

Hopefully the information I provided offline was useful.
EVM in MS Project is addressed in two ways: %Complete and Physical%Complete.

I find the key thing to remember is that EVM is a measure of budget & cost
success: Budgeted COST of Work Scheduled (BCWS), Budgeted COST of Work
Performed (BCWP). This is why I lean toward the Physical%Complete method.
However, if you only work load MS Project (and not cost load it), then I
would lean towards using %Work Complete.

As for customization, there really is not that much to do --- it comes down
to the normal formulas. However, there are a couple of new techniques
presenting themselves that could be usefule:

(1) Earned Schedule. If you look at the formula for SPI=BCWP/BCWS you will
see that at the end of the program SPI shall equal 1.0. However, this does
not make sense for programs that finish early (or late) since a late program
should carry an SPI less than 1.0 to the very end.

(2) Baseline Executability Index (BEI) which is Count of Baseline Tasks that
were Actually completed divided by count of baseline tasks scheduled to be
completed. It is the % of baseline tasks completed in the reporting period.
1.0 is good.

If you have any specific questions or thoughts, please post back and share
the information with the community.

 

[Michelle Moulliet]

Thanks for your help, Jim. I think my management team is pretty sold on
using the % Complete calculation option rather than the Physical % Complete;
but I intend to review your docs a little more thoroughly as I think they
will still be helpful to me.

Here are my current EVM questions/issues.
1) How the assignments are calculated vis a vis the tasks? In one of my
readings, I found that even if you select % Complete as your EVM calculation
method, that at the assignment level, % Work Complete is used to calculate
EVM (even though % Work Complete is not even supposed to be an EVM
calculation method). This seems strange to me & I feel like the assignments
should be calculated the same way as the tasks (currently % Complete in my
plan).

2) What exactly do the following Calculation options do under
Tools>Options>Calculation?
- Updating task status updates resource status
- Edits to total task % complete will be spread to the status date
- Actual costs are always calculated by Microsoft Office Project

3) I have also had some issues where I get the same SPI for entering a wide
range of % Completes at the task level. For instance, 50% complete will give
me the same SPI as 75% complete. This last bullet will probably make the
most sense for me to post a specific example, the next time I find this
happening.

I'd appreciate any input on these topics.

Thanks,
Michelle