Earned Value Calculation in MSP 2003

I don’t know if it’s common practice to answer to your own thread but here we go anyway.

MS Project takes the baseline start into consideration when it calculates the BCWP (=EV). An activity which was not supposed to have started will not receive any Earned Value, no matter the percentage complete.

Since this is utterly wrong you’ll need to create your own custom EVM-fields with formulas in MSP, or push the whole lot into Excel.

I hope this saves other people some time (and frustration) in figuring out what the hell is wrong with the EVM numbers from MSP.

Cheers,

Niek.

Hi Nick,

Although you answer your own question, you have done the best for planners.

I do believe EARNED VALUE is the future for planners.

I encourage you to move on and tell us more about EARNED VALUE.

Cheer,

To Nick,
I haven’t tried working Earned Value with any planning software and very much contented doing it with MS Excel sheets. Earned value has nothing to do with status date, I believe, since the formula alone says BCWP (Earned Value)= % Complete x Budget.

To Planners,
For those not familiar with Earned Value or BCWP (Budgeted of Work Performed), this is very important on tracking project costs and comparing with schedule (BCWS) and actual values (ACWP). I recommend reading the book of Mr. Fleming (Earned Value Management Systems).

Regards,
Rommel

Just to correct my error that BCWP is Budgeted Cost of Work Performed

You are right Rommel,

EV = BCWP = Earned Value has nothing to do with the status date. So in order to get this right you need to build your own spreadsheet in MS Project (with formulas in custom fields) or push the whole lot into Excel; Which is probably the shortest option.

This is probably the Microsoft way of showing that integration between their office products is so seamless :-)

Cheers,

Niek.