Interpreting BCWP Caculation: Part II

[verossa]

Here is my MS Excel project information - the status date was set to
21/05/04

10/5/04 [DAY 1]
ACWP £20.00
BCWP £80.00
BCWS £80.00

11/5/04 [DAY 2]
ACWP £20.00
BCWP £160.00
BCWS £160.00

12/5/04 [DAY 3]
ACWP £40.00
BCWP £240.00
BCWS £240.00

13/5/04 [DAY 4]
ACWP £80.00
BCWP £320.00
BCWS £320.00

14/5/04 [DAY 5]
ACWP £140.00
BCWP £400.00
BCWS £400.00

17/5/04 [DAY 6]
ACWP £280.00
BCWP £480.00
BCWS £480.00

18/5/04 [DAY 7]
ACWP £440.00
BCWP £560.00
BCWS £560.00

19/5/04 [DAY 8]
ACWP £760.00
BCWP £640.00
BCWS £640.00

20/5/04 [DAY 9]
ACWP £1,080.00
BCWP £720.00
BCWS £720.00

21/5/04 [DAY 10]
ACWP £1,080.00
BCWP £720.00
BCWS £800.00

Task 1 Earned Value Analysis as per Task Usage View
BCWS: £800.00
BCWP: £720.00
ACWP: £1,080.00
SV: £80.00
CV: -£360.00
EAC: £1,080.00
BAC: £800.00
WAC: -£280.00

Resource: Verossa
BCWS: £800.00
BCWP: £800.00
ACWP: £1,080.00
SV: £0.00
CV: -£280.00
EAC: £1,080.00
BAC: £800.00
WAC: -£280.00

Question:

1) On the 10/5/04 and 11/5/04. The actual work lower than BCWS but why is
the BCWP the same as BCWS? Likewise, 19/5/04 and 20/5/04 the actual work is
much higher than the baseline. So I assumed this would reflect the BCWP.

2) How do I interpret the EVA information in Task Usage View? Are there any
help online resource, or can anyone provide any tips / hints.

3) The help file states: "Microsoft Project calculates BCWP. The amount of
work complete is multiplied by the assignment's timephased baseline cost."
Can any explain how the calculation works - as it seems to always be the
same as BCWS, and there I do not see the significance of BCWP. The help
files also states: "percentage of the budget that should have been spent for
a given percentage of work performed on a task." But when the given
percentage of work performed is greater or less than the budgeted /
baseline - I see no difference?

Finally, thanks to everyone who has assisted me and taken time out to answer
my many questions.

Have a good day,
Verossa

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

1) On the 10/5/04 and 11/5/04 : the BCWP is the same as BCWS because you did
exactly what you had to do. And you actually spent less. Good work !

1) On the 19/5/04 and 20/5/04 : the BCWP is the same as BCWS because you did
exactly what you had to do. But you actually spent a lot more. Bad work !

Another example :
The workers had to do a wall around your property : 1000 m long for a
baselined (contracted) price of 100 000 £. That means 100 £ each meter. On
the end of may, they were expected to built 300 m of that wall, with a
budget of 30 000 £. So the BCWS is 30 000 £. But the workers built only 250
m : so the BCWP is only 25 000 £. And they actually spent 35 000£ because
the foundations were unstable and the wall felt 3 times ! So the ACWP is
35000 £.

Hope this helps,

Gérard Ducouret [Project MVP]
PragmaSoft ® - Paris

 

[verossa]

Morning Gerard,

Hope your well - its a beautiful day here in the UK! Hope the weather is
good where you are

I totally understand your example. However, if like you say at the end of
may BCWS is 30,000 and BCWP 25,000 then this would show a variance when
charted in excel - it would not be the same. I understand your point about
ACWP as an overspend means you have acheived your BCWS so the additional
overspend is not show i.e. BCWP cannot be greater than BCWS.

I can't believe I'm so confused LOL

Oh well - its going to take a little more time than I imagined to fathom
ACWP.

Thanks for responding - Vers

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

Hello Verossa,
Fine weather around Paris too. I was in a beautiful forest yesterday...

BCWP *can* be greater than BCWS, hopefully (even if it's rare)
In the previous example, at the end of may, they were expected to built 300
m of that wall, with a
budget of 30 000 £. So the BCWS is 30 000 £. But the workers, which were in
a good mood, built 350
m : so the BCWP is up to 35 000 £.
A good graph in Excel will show the 3 S curves and the variances.

See you tomorrow

Gérard Ducouret

Morning Gerard,

Hope your well - its a beautiful day here in the UK! Hope the weather is
good where you are

I totally understand your example. However, if like you say at the end of
may BCWS is 30,000 and BCWP 25,000 then this would show a variance when
charted in excel - it would not be the same. I understand your point about
ACWP as an overspend means you have acheived your BCWS so the additional
overspend is not show i.e. BCWP cannot be greater than BCWS.

I can't believe I'm so confused LOL

Oh well - its going to take a little more time than I imagined to fathom
ACWP.

Thanks for responding - Vers

1) On the 10/5/04 and 11/5/04 : the BCWP is the same as BCWS because you did
exactly what you had to do. And you actually spent less. Good work !

1) On the 19/5/04 and 20/5/04 : the BCWP is the same as BCWS because you did
exactly what you had to do. But you actually spent a lot more. Bad work !

Another example :
The workers had to do a wall around your property : 1000 m long for a
baselined (contracted) price of 100 000 £. That means 100 £ each meter. On
the end of may, they were expected to built 300 m of that wall, with a
budget of 30 000 £. So the BCWS is 30 000 £. But the workers built only 250
m : so the BCWP is only 25 000 £. And they actually spent 35 000£ because
the foundations were unstable and the wall felt 3 times ! So the ACWP is
35000 £.

Hope this helps,

Gérard Ducouret [Project MVP]
PragmaSoft ® - Paris

 

[Verossa]

Morning Gerard

Please to see the weather in Paris is nice!!! The forest sounds nice :-

Can I email you off-group with a simple example that I cannot understand? It only contains one tasks, and I'm trying to understand how the tasks EVA information is derived

If you're busy I understand :-

Thanks for responding - Vers

 

[Gérard Ducouret]

Hi Verossa,
Of course you can send it to me. You have my email address.
NB : during our previous exchange, I never succeeded to send a file sample
on you own email address : error messages.

Gérard

Morning Gerard,

Please to see the weather in Paris is nice!!! The forest sounds nice

Can I email you off-group with a simple example that I cannot understand?

It only contains one tasks, and I'm trying to understand how the tasks EVA
information is derived.

 

[Verossa]

Thanks Gerard

I'll send the sample over in the next hr :-

Speak later

 

[Robert]

Verossa,
Don't confuse the sale price of what you are building and the amount of
work you spent to realize it. You task is not named. If it was "Built a 50 m
wall within 5 days with one worker full time at 10£/hr", I could say, before
the launch of the project :
- The worker will cost 80 £ each day. I expect that he will build 10 meters
each day for a cost of 80 £/day (Bricks not included), that is a total of
400 £.
- As you entered the tracking data, it looks like the worker finished the
wall just in time on the 21/05/04. So he deserved to be paid 80 x 5 = 400 £.
I see that the progress has been evenly linear : 10m/day because BCWS and
BCWP are always equal.
To realise this progress, the worker worked only 2h each of the first 2 days
: the job was very easy and he took some more money in it's pocket. But on
the 20th and on the 21th may, he met a lots of problems and spent a lot more
time and money to finish in time. In fact, he finished in time but he spent
280 £ more than the budget.

Sincerely,

Gérard Ducouret
Pragmasoft ® - Paris
One more explanation about BCWP : Earned Value ("Valeur aquise") in French.
The old guys said "Valeur Méritée"
That means "The value you deserve".
If the worker had to built a 50 meters wall with a contract budget of 400 £,
and really he build this 50m wall, he deserve 400£ and you have to pay him
400£.
May be he was a little bit a crook and told you "The foundations of this
wall are difficult to dig, I need to work 8 hr to build 10 m of this wall"
In fact, he spent only 2h each day. So you know that he took 6h x 10 £ in
its pocket for nothing. You'll take this in account to negociate a next
contract in the future, but today you owe him 400£.

Hope this helps,

Gérard Ducouret
PragmaSoft ® - Paris

 

[Robert]

Verossa,
I can't answer directly to you email address.
8 hours after I sent you my mail, I receive this kind of error message.
Gérard
========================================

This is the SMTP Server program at host wanadoo.fr.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that the message returned
below could not be delivered to one or more destinations.

For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster>

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the message returned below.

The SMTP Server program
<[email protected]>: site destination queue overflow

 

[verossa]

Hi Robert

Thanks for responding. Did you remove the _nospam from the email address

Speak later - Vers

 

[Verossa]

Hi James

Thanks for a very interesting response. I managed to find this information from a website link provided by JulieS but I'm pleased you can appreciate my confusion(s). Unfortunately, many of the tasks are fixed duration because the nature of the dependencies with other tasks

However, I think I might have to manually calculate the % work complete in order to assess the BCWP. I don't have access to MS Project 2002 (dam!!!

Thanks again for responding - Vers