October
- November - December 2009 |
|
Two presentations on Earned Schedule were made at the November International Integrated Program Management Conference held in Alexandria, VA. Mr. Sohei Okamoto of the University of Nevada, Reno presented “Visualizing Cost and Duration Estimation Using Earned Schedule.” The team of Michelle Jones, Jason Meyer, and Doug Flanagan, representing Booze Allen Hamilton, presented the results from their application of ES entitled, “Emerging Earned Value Management Technique, Earned Schedule.” |
|
The first EVA conference held in Europe took place at CERN, the particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. Walt Lipke made three presentations concerning ES: 1) “Earned Schedule, schedule analysis from EVM measures”; 2) “Project Duration Forecasting, a comparison of EVM methods to ES”; 3) “Schedule Adherence, a useful measure for project management.” Next year’s EVA Europe Conference is currently scheduled to occur November 2010 in Ghent, Belgium. More definitive announcements concerning this conference will be made in future updates. |
|
At the Europe EVA conference Messrs Roland Horat and James Bulmer discussed the SuperTech Project Management software, EVENGINE. The software provides an integrated approach to managing project and financial performance. At the conference, Mr. Horat and Mr. Bulmer approached Walt Lipke and Kym Henderson with the idea of incorporating ES into their product. Since the conference discussion significant progress has been made; an updated EVENGINE 6.6 version will be released at the PMI® Global Congress – Asia Pacific the end of February. The SuperTech product and contact information is available at the EVM-ES Tools link. |
|
Walt Lipke’s book Earned Schedule was published December 2009. The book is available in print or as a download. The printed version is $36 USD and the download is priced at $14 USD. The book will become available through Amazon and other retailers by February 2010. Presently it is available for purchase at the following link http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=4480692. |
|
A paper describing the application of Earned Schedule to a pipeline construction project was recently discovered. The paper, “How does a new set of Earned Value Management schedule control work? A case study in Iran,” was written by Morteza Shokri-Ghasabeh and Navid Akrami and published in the February 2009 issue of World Scientific and Engineering Academy and Society Transactions on Environment and Development. The paper is excellent and describes the issue of overcoming resistance to the implementation of EVM. The paper is available for download free from charge at http://www.wseas.us/e-library/transactions/environment/2009/28-836.pdf. |
August
- September 2009 |
|
Carl Rutigliano of BAE Systems contacted
Walt Lipke this last May-June to discuss the incorporation
of ES into BAE’s predictive analysis tools. During
the email exchanges, Walt discovered an error in the
ES Calculator v2b which Carl was using for the BAE application.
Although the error would only occur under an anomalous
condition, it has been corrected in version v2c; the
revised calculator is available for download from the
es calculator page. |
|
Robert Van de Velde recently had his
paper, “A Measure of Time,” published on-line
at the Projects at Work website (www.ProjectsAtWork.com).
His paper discusses a real world application of the
concept of Schedule Adherence. Projects
at Work has given us permission to make Robert’s
paper available at the Papers page. |
|
The paper, “Schedule Adherence
…a useful measure for project management,”
by Walt Lipke was published in 2009 Issue 3 (September)
of The Measurable
News. |
|
Robert Ferguson of the Software Engineering
Institute indicates he is preparing a Technical Report
on leading indicators for project managers, which includes
ES and Schedule Adherence. Publication of the SEI paper
is expected sometime in November. |
|
Dr. Gary Richardson, Project Management
Program Coordinator at the University of Houston, has
authored the book, Project
Management Theory and Practice. The book
contains a discussion of ES and is presently listed
on Amazon as being available in January of 2010. Amazon
is taking pre-orders for Dr. Richardson’s book. |
|
The
International Journal of Project Management recently
identified its top 25 “hottest” articles.
The listed articles spanned from December 1999
to July 2009. The article “Prediction
of Project Outcome: The application of statistical methods
to earned value management and earned schedule performance
indexes,” written by Lipke, Zwikael, Henderson,
and Anbari, and published in May 2009, is 14th in the
listing. The article is available from the Science
Direct website (www.sciencedirect.com)
for a fee of $31.50 USD. Mr. Lipke has presented
this paper at the 2007 Integrated Program Manag2ement
Conference and the 2008 EVM World Conference. Both
presentations are freely available for download at the Presentations page. |
|
Scott Crew of Administrative Controls
Management, Inc. presented his paper, “Activity
Duration-Based Schedule Progress and Prediction Metrics,”
at the 53rd annual meeting of The Association for the
Advancement of Cost Engineering. In the paper,
Mr. Crew explored his ideas for forecasting and the
concept of applying ES calculations to a schedule that
is not resource/cost loaded. By using activity
duration data instead of cost data, Mr. Crew compared
his approach to ES, attempting to validate the schedule
progress and schedule completion predicting capabilities
of the resultant time-based metrics. The paper
is available through the purchase of the 2009 AACE Transactions
(www.aacei.org/annualmeeting/2009/)
at a charge of $110 USD. |
|
At the upcoming 2009 Integrated Program
Management Conference to be held 2-4 November in Alexandria,
VA, there will be two presentations discussing ES. One
is by Sohei Okamoto, a PhD student at the University
of Nevada, who has developed a project management tool
utilizing ES. The second presentation is from
Michelle Jones, Jason Meyer, and Doug Flanagan
of Booze Allen Hamilton. Their presentation describes
two case studies of the use of ES. One study was
in a government environment while the other was for
a private business. |
|
In late September, Walt Lipke submitted
for publication the manuscript for a book on Earned
Schedule. When published the book will be available
in paperback at retail outlets and can be purchased
as an e-book, as well. It is estimated the ES book will
become available in January 2010. |
|
The first EVM conference to be held
in Europe is planned to occur 25-26 November 2009.
The conference is hosted by the Geneva School of Business
Administration (HEG) in collaboration with the European
Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN). Several
people who have been significant in the propagation
of ES will be in attendance at the conference, including
Kym Henderson (Australia), Steve Wake and Alex Davis
(United Kingdom), Dr, Mario Vanhoucke and Stephan Vandevoorde
(Belgium), and Walt Lipke (USA). Information concerning
the historic EVA-Europe conference may be obtained at http://www.eva-europe.eu/. |
July
2009 |
|
The 14th annual United Kingdom EVA conference
was held 8-11 June in London. At the conference
a presentation was made by Peter Hayward of BAE Systems,
“Predicting the Future,” which contained
a good discussion of ES. The feedback received
regarding Mr. Hayward’s presentation was that
“…the ES demo was the easiest to understand
that they had seen to date.” |
|
Also at EVA 14, an ES Workshop, “Earned
Schedule: Principles and Practice,” was held for
the first time by someone other than Walt Lipke and
Kym Henderson. Alex Davis of the UK MOD and Mick
Higgins of Thales Group hosted the workshop. In
the workshop ES was expanded into two new areas of application
– Cost of Delay and Risk. The presentation
and the workshop materials are graciously made available
on the Presentations page by the authors. |
|
In late June, Stephan Vandevoorde (Belgium)
observed that the Papers page did not include his paper
written with Dr. Mario Vanhoucke, “Forecasting
a Project’s Duration under Various Topological
Structures.” The paper was published
in Issue 1 of the 2009 College of Performance Management
publication The Measurable
News. The oversight has been corrected
with the addition of the paper to the Papers page of
the website. |
|
Stephan Vandevoorde has made available
for download from the Presentations page the Earned
Schedule portion of his recent presentation, “Earned
Value – A Practical Approach.” Mr.
Vandevoorde’s presentation, made June 23 at Boston
University in Brussels, Belgium, was well received by
the graduate level international students attending.
|
May -
June 2009 |
|
In last month’s news it was reported
that Kym Henderson is making available upon request
his EVM-ES set of spreadsheets. Since that time,
Mr. Henderson has changed his email address. If
interested in obtaining his project management tool,
please contact Mr. Henderson through his email: kym.henderson@gmail.com.
|
|
In discussion with a user of the v2
version of the Earned Schedule calculator a computation
error was discovered. The error occurs in the
first period calculation and has been corrected in the
version now posted on the es
calculator page, ES
Calculator v2c. |
|
A paper published in the March 2009 issue
of Projects and Profits
was erroneously omitted from the last website update.
The paper, “The TCPI indicator: Transforming
Project Performance,” by Walt Lipke has been added
to the Papers page. |
|
The activity level of the website requests
has soared in May. The number of requests for
May has established a new record, 40459. |
March
- April 2009 |
|
Kym Henderson has consented to make
available upon request his EVM-ES set of spreadsheets.
The spreadsheets are an extensive collection of project
management tools providing graphical output and analysis
capability for variance, indexes and forecasting.
If interested in obtaining this project management tool,
please contact Mr. Henderson through his email: kym.henderson@froggy.com.au.
|
|
The page for ES Terminology has been
updated with a revised Table 2. The acronym used
for the To Complete Schedule Performance Index has been
changed from TSPI(t) to reflect the current use of TSPI. |
|
The description and link to the PMI Metrics
Specific Interest Group webinar, "Earned Schedule
- An Emerging Enhancement to Earned Value Management,"
conducted in 2007 has been added to the Concept Description.
The webinar link is included as a further extension
to the readings recommended at the conclusion of the
description. |
|
The paper, “Prediction of project
outcome, the application of statistical methods to Earned
Value Management and Earned Schedule performance indexes,”
was published in the May 2009 issue of the
International Journal of Project Management.
The paper, co-authored by Walt Lipke, Dr. Ofer
Zwikael, Kym Henderson and Dr. Frank Anbari, is available
for purchase ($31.50 USD) from Science Direct website,
www.sciencedirect.com.
The direct link to the article is provided on the Papers
page. |
|
Two articles by Walt Lipke, “The
To Complete Performance Index …an expanded view”
and “Project Duration Forecasting …a comparison
of Earned Value Management methods to Earned Schedule,”
have been published in the spring 2009 issue of The
Measurable News. Both papers are available
for download from the Papers page. |
|
At the PMI – Oklahoma City Chapter
spring symposium held 30 April - 1 May in Norman, Oklahoma,
Walt Lipke presented “Project Duration Forecasting
…a comparison of EVM methods to ES.” A
pdf copy of the slides is available for download on
the Presentations page. |
|
The activity level of the website requests
has remained high through March and April. The
month of March has established another new high for
requests, 39338. The number of requests for April,
34065, continues to show considerable interest in ES.
|
January
- February 2009 |
|
Two major international
projects report that they are working toward implementing
ES, the derivative indicators and methods, into their
project management practices. One project is the
Network Rail in London, while the other involves the
development of a major oil field in Kazakhstan.
Both projects are extremely large with significant value
and execution over a long duration. |
|
Alex Davis, UK MoD, presented “Earned
Schedule: Principles and Practice” at the Association
for Project Management (APM) EVM & Risk Conference
held in Glasgow, Scotland on 5 March. The presentation
was made twice and was well attended in each session.
As reported by Mr. Davis considerable interest was shown
in ES and its accompanying concept of schedule adherence. |
|
At the 2009 Association for the Advancement
of Cost Engineering (AACE) Symposium held 28 February
in Long Beach, CA, Ray Stratton presented “Predicting
Project Completion Date Using Earned Value Management.”
Mr. Stratton reports the ES forecasting method was well
received by an audience of approximately 50. |
|
At the 19 February meeting of the PMI
– Valencia, Spain Chapter (http://www.pmi-valencia.org/),
Dr. Diego Navarro made a presentation on ES. Dr.
Navarro indicates the 30 attendees were mostly EVM practitioners
and that they displayed enthusiasm for the ES concept
and methods. |
|
More evidence has come forth with regard
to ES being included in university coursework.
Dr. Diego Navarro reported last month that he presented
ES to master’s level students at the University
of Valencia, Spain. In the past there has been
evidence of the ES concepts being taught at the George
Washington University. Dr. Mario Vanhoucke at
the University of Ghent in Belgium has performed a considerable
amount of research on ES and reports ES is taught in
several of his courses. Likewise, Dr. Ofer Zwikael has
indicated that he instructs ES to his students at the
Australian National University. |
|
The v1 and v2 versions of the ES calculator
have been updated to v1a and v2b, respectively. The
headings of the first two columns on the ES calc sheets
have been changed from BCWP and BCWS to the modern terminology
of EV and PV. |
|
The website link EVM Time Forecasting
has been updated with references to research evidence
indicating ES is a superior forecasting method. |
|
The activity level of the website requests
has remained high through January and February.
In fact, February – the shortest month –
has registered a new record for requests, 37317. The
February amount exceeds the former record month of April
2008 by 2407. The number of requests for January,
33020, showed considerable interest in ES, as well.
Over 29 gigabytes of data have been downloaded from
the website over the time of operation, which began
in February of 2006, with two gigabytes occurring in
the last two months. |