A Simplistic Model of Performing Earned Value Management (EVM) in a Project.

Most discussions on Earned Value Management (EVM) will tell us to compute planned values, PV(t), at the time of planning the project, and assess Earned Values, EV(t), as we make progress over time. This is a very easy and effective way of assessing how the project is performing with respect to time, i.e., schedule.

The problem, in many cases, is that Planned Value (PV) cannot realistically be computed at all. In a project that is expected to take about 18 months to complete, with an average of 25 engineers on the project throughout, and the number of engineers changing over time, we can only begin to compute the planned value as time progresses.

Whither Agile Methodology?

Agile methodology has been in use in many corporations around the globe. Perhaps the best example of the results of this methodology is the mindboggling frequency with which newer versions of browsers are being made available. (For example, in just over three years, Google Chrome has been released in 18 major versions, not to speak of many more minor versions: Today, it is 18.0.1025.151 m).

In What Agile Teams Think of Agile Principles (subscription), Laurie Williams describes some research she conducted recently that reassures us that the original 12 principles of Agile Manifesto, crafted about 10 years ago, are still very much valid among agile practitioners. Here is an excerpt from the conclusions of that article:

The authors of the Agile Manifesto and the original 12 principles spelled out the essence of the agile trend that has transformed the software industry over more than a dozen years. That is, they nailed it.

This reassurance is valuable because there are still pockets of developer groups that are still uncertain as to whether to embrace Agile methodology.