Point-Based EVMS for MSP

[Andrew Lavinsky]

Anyone had any luck getting a point-based earned value system to work for
a company which does not track costs?

Would appreciate any suggestions.

Rgds,

-A

 

[John]

Anyone had any luck getting a point-based earned value system to work for
a company which does not track costs?

Would appreciate any suggestions.

Rgds,

-A

Andrew,
A point based earned value certainly would be possible with Project but
there are a lot of questions. The first of which is, how are "points"
earned? Do your tasks still have resources assigned? If not, how does
the work get done?

Developing the system will require the use of formulas in custom fields
or quite likely a VBA macro to calculate the earned value algorithms.

If you do in fact still assign resource, here's something you might try.
Instead of having your resources at $0/hr, (which of course gives zero
cost), try using $1/hr for all resources. You can then use the classical
earned value metrics and the "points" will be contained in the
normalized cost values. You may or may not want to also consider using %
Physical Complete instead of % Complete for the earned value progress
metric.

Just an idea.
John
Project MVP

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

Thanks for the tip....figured that I might as well document this for posterity:

Played around w/ both methods (% Complete, and Physical % Complete), didn't
really take to either....so ended up going down the route of developing custom
fields to calculate EV, SV, CV, SPI, CPI, EAC based upon % Work Complete.
(PV, AC were still ok as the default).

So far, on the Task level, this seems to be working. I then converted the
fields to Resource fields, and this I think is probably where I will get
the most bang for the buck...as now I can use the data to gauge performance
and/or estimating ability by Resource or by Department.

I wanted to take the calculations down to the assignment level, but here
I was stymied....as I can't figure out how to make a custom calculated field
on the assignment level in the Resource Usage View...my custom fields roll
up to the Resource and even the Departmental Group (w/ the exception of the
Flag fields), but they don't register on the Assignment - this despite the
fact that the built in MSP EV fields do seem to calculate Assignment data.

One other thing that I did for the Point-Based EVMS, was to:

1) Set up 2 X cost structures using 2 X rate tables: $1/h & $3/h
2) Assign the $3/h rate to critical path tasks to create an arbitrary weighting
system
3) Turn off the currency indicator, so you can't tell the EV calculations
are really using dollars - now they just look like numbers.

Hope that helps somebody.

-A

 

[John]

Thanks for the tip....figured that I might as well document this for
posterity:

Played around w/ both methods (% Complete, and Physical % Complete), didn't
really take to either....so ended up going down the route of developing
custom
fields to calculate EV, SV, CV, SPI, CPI, EAC based upon % Work Complete.
(PV, AC were still ok as the default).

So far, on the Task level, this seems to be working. I then converted the
fields to Resource fields, and this I think is probably where I will get
the most bang for the buck...as now I can use the data to gauge performance
and/or estimating ability by Resource or by Department.

I wanted to take the calculations down to the assignment level, but here
I was stymied....as I can't figure out how to make a custom calculated field
on the assignment level in the Resource Usage View...my custom fields roll
up to the Resource and even the Departmental Group (w/ the exception of the
Flag fields), but they don't register on the Assignment - this despite the
fact that the built in MSP EV fields do seem to calculate Assignment data.

One other thing that I did for the Point-Based EVMS, was to:

1) Set up 2 X cost structures using 2 X rate tables: $1/h & $3/h
2) Assign the $3/h rate to critical path tasks to create an arbitrary
weighting
system
3) Turn off the currency indicator, so you can't tell the EV calculations
are really using dollars - now they just look like numbers.

Hope that helps somebody.

-A

Andrew,
With regard to trying to use formulas for assignment spare fields, go to
our MVP website at: http://project.mvps.org/faqs.htm
and take a look at FAQ 51 - Data Types: Task, Resource and Assignment.
It will answer your question.

John
Project MVP

 

[Andrew]

Thanks....for what it's worth (just to document), I tried out the same
exercise in MPP07 Beta, and it does have a function which allows Assignment
roll-down of calculated custom fields.

-A

 

[John]

Thanks....for what it's worth (just to document), I tried out the same
exercise in MPP07 Beta, and it does have a function which allows Assignment
roll-down of calculated custom fields.

-A

Andrew,
Interesting. I haven't messed with Project 12 (2007) yet but it's nice
to hear some more features were added.

John
Project MVP