Cash flow Vs Progress

IMHO, this is the benefit of EV reporting. Management usually understand $$$ very well, so translating everything into $$$ terms helps.

"We have spent (AC) dollars."
"We have achieved (EV) dollars worth of work."
"We had expected to achieve (PV) dollars worth of work by this date."
"We originally budgeted to spend (BAC) dollars. Currently, we expect the final cost to be (EAC) dollars."

How about:

Have we achieved anything other than spending money, logging Hours and elapsing duration, and if so what?

Do we know what have been and are the most important, most valuable, most productive and most critical Tasks?

Have we been working on the most important, most valuable, most productive and most critical Tasks, and if not why not?

What have we done to plan, analyse and optimise what remains to be done?

Ev approach is useful as far as it goes but it does not answer these questions.

Scott;

We seldom report on dollars when using Earned Value. Labor hours are our usual reporting factor. Earned value for us, is just the realized value of a budget amount (hours) for a completed activity.

I sympathize with anyone whose management does not understand the elemental concept of non-linear progress.

Trevor;

EV is intended as a progress measurement tool (productivity), not a substitute for CPM. Work achieved for work expended. With EV an attempt is made to ’objectify’ the value of the work achieved - no more.

Trevor dahling - all in the best possible taste, but,- your usual diatribe - again :-)

When will you get it into your ’ead that the EAC curve will tell you whether you’ve been doing the "critical" tasks. If you aint been doing them, then the EAC curve will slip-out beyond the end-date of your BCWS curve. How much simpler can you get?????

James. :-)