| November
- December 2008 |
| |
In late October and early November contacts
were made with people who are teaching and using the
concept of Schedule
Adherence. Rob Sollomon, a project controls
manager for Parsons Brinkerhoff in the UK, is applying
the p-factor metric in his work on major infrastructure
projects and Kotaro Mizuno, a private consultant in
Japan, is teaching the concept in his project management
training course. Mr. Mizuno’s information
is listed on the Training Sources page. |
| |
Likewise, in early December feedback
was received from Alex Davis. Mr. Davis is applying
the Schedule Adherence (SA) measure to the UK’s
FALCON defense project using the facility of the Project
Flight Deck software (see EVM-ES Tools page).
Mr. Davis indicates the information from the application
of SA has been of assistance to him in having the project
recognize its true status. |
| |
At the 22nd International Project Management
Association conference held 9-11 November in Rome, Italy,
research awards were announced. Dr. Mario Vanhoucke,
a professor at the University of Ghent in Belgium was
named the Outstanding Research winner for 2008 for his
studies concerning the forecasting of project duration.
His research has shown that ES, in certain conditions,
provides the best forecast of project duration in comparison
to other EVM based methods. Dr. Vanhoucke’s
presentation may be found on his website, www.or-as.be,
as well as on the Presentations page of this site. |
| |
It is noteworthy that the two winners
for Outstanding Research Contribution at the IPMA conference
were Drs. Frank Anbari and Ofer Zwikael of The
George Washington University and the Victoria University
of Wellington, NZ, respectively. Although ES was
not involved in their awards, these two researchers
have contributed to the advancement of ES. |
| |
Dr. Vanhoucke has announced that interested
readers may receive free newsletters from his website
www.or-as.be.
These letters are anticipated to contain up to date
information concerning his research and project management
tool, ProTrack. |
| |
Dr. Vanhoucke on 26 November presented
at the Vlerick Business School in the Management &
Information and Communication Technology Forum.
His presentation concerned his research, which has bearing
on the validity of the ES method. The title of
his presentation was “An Extensive Review of Earned
Value Metrics and Some Recent Developments to Forecast
Total Project Duration.” The feedback from
Dr. Vanhoucke was that his presentation was enthusiastically
received by those attending. |
| |
Dr. Diego Navarro reports that he gave
a presentation to Master’s level students in project
management at the University of Valencia, Spain.
In the presentation he introduced the Earned Schedule
extension to EVM. Furthermore, Dr. Navarro indicates
that the Engineering School of the University of Valencia
has included ES into some of their Project Management
programs. He expects to present ES at PMI Valencia
Chapter in the 1st quarter of 2009. |
| |
Early in December, Mr. Tejas Sura presented
ES to the PMI Mumbai, India Chapter. Mr Sura is
the president of the PMI chapter and the Managing Director
of Conart Engineers Limited. Feedback provided
by Mr. Sura from his presentation was: “We
had a record gathering of approximately 120 attendees
including Practitioners, University Professors &
Students from IT, Construction sectors. Attendees found
the concept interesting.” |
| |
Kym Henderson and Greg Smith hosted
a workshop during November at the International Integrated
Program Management Conference. The workshop was
titled, “Does Project Performance Stability Exist?
A Re-Examination of CPI and Examination of SPI(t) Stability.”
The workshop presentation concerning this highly controversial
topic is posted on the Presentations page. |
| |
The December issue of CrossTalk
published Walt Lipke’s article, "Project
Duration Forecasting: Comparing Earned Value Management
Methods to Earned Schedule." ES was shown
to be superior to the other EVM methods. |
| |
A paper presented by Ray Stratton in
2007 at the Association for Advancement of Cost Engineering
is now included on the Papers page. The paper
is titled, “Applying Earned Schedule Analysis
to EVM Data for Estimating Completion Date.” |
| |
The activity level of the website requests
has remained high, even through the holiday season of
December. In fact, December is the 2nd highest
month, only 200 requests below the record month of April
2008. The number of requests for November was
28396 while December was 34688. Over 27 gigabytes
of data have been downloaded from the website over the
time of operation, which began in February of 2006. |
| September
- October 2008 |
| |
The September issue of the Belgium journal,
Orator - the house
magazine of Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School,
contains a short article concerning Professor Mario
Vanhoucke’s new book, Measuring
Time. The brief article discusses how Dr.
Vanhoucke became interested in Earned Schedule and how
the technique has influenced his research. The
article also mentions the 4-day project management program
which Dr. Vanhoucke instructs at the university, including
its fall and spring schedules. |
| |
Looking forward, an article, “Project
Duration Forecasting – a comparison of Earned
Value Management Methods to Earned Schedule,”
by Walt Lipke is scheduled for publication in the upcoming
December 2008 issue of CrossTalk.
The article compares and tests four methods from EVM
against ES using real data from 16 projects. |
| |
A request from the Quality Assurance
Institute was received this last June for permission
to reprint Walt Lipke’s article from the April
2008 issue of CrossTalk,
“Schedule Adherence: A Useful Measure For Project
Management.” This article is to appear in
the October issue of QAI’s quarterly journal,
The Journal of the
QAI Global Institute. As reported earlier,
this article was also requested for reprinting by the
Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India University
Press (ICFAI) for their publication, Projects
& Profits. The article was published
in their June issue of the journal. |
| |
During August, ICFAI contacted Mr. Lipke
for permission to reprint his article, “Applying
Earned Value and Earned Schedule to Project Management.”
The article, previously published in the October 2007
issue of Projects
& Profits, is to appear in ICFAI’s
upcoming book titled, Project
Management Knowledge Areas (subject to change).
The book is reported to be available in the near
future. |
| |
Dr. Mario Vanhoucke, associate professor
at Ghent University, Belgium, presented “Measuring
Time – static and dynamic determinants of earned
value based time forecast accuracy,” at the PMI
9th BeNeLux Day Conference, which was hosted in Belgium
and occurred 27 September 2008. Dr. Vanhoucke
indicates this presentation is much the same as the
one given in June at the EVA XIII conference held in
London. |
| |
Dr. Vanhoucke and associate, Tom Van
Acker, have completed a set of project management tools
under the name, ProTrack.
The tools, incorporating Earned Value and Earned
Schedule along with other developed management techniques,
have been available for purchase beginning 14 October
2008. |
| |
The activity level of the website requests
has continued to be much higher than the norm of last
year. The number of requests for September was 29254
while October is projected to be in excess of 32000.
At this time, nearly 25 gigabytes of data have
been downloaded from the website over the time of operation,
which began in February of 2006. |
| July
- August 2008 |
| |
In past news, the development of EVM
tools which incorporate ES has been discussed. To
consolidate this information and make the availability
of these tools more evident, a link has been added to
the website, “EVM-ES
Tools.” Please have a look at the
information provided; if your interest is piqued, contact
the developer. They will welcome your inquiries
and questions. |
| |
The summer issue of the College of Performance
Management publication, The
Measurable News, contains two articles of interest.
One by Walt Lipke titled, “The Use and Impact
of Earned Value Management on Software Projects,”
describes the productivity and quality gains documented
from the application of EVM and Earned Schedule to software
development projects. The second article, authored
by Dr. Mario Vanhoucke and Stephan Vandevoorde, is “Earned
Value Forecast Accuracy and Activity Criticality.”
This article describes the testing and evaluation
of forecasting for two EVM based methods and Earned
Schedule. |
| |
A short article, “Earned Schedule
– Schedule Analysis from EVM Measures,”
by Walt Lipke appeared in the July issue of Project
Landscape. This publication is a new
one which serves several PMI chapters in Oklahoma, Texas,
Arkansas, Louisiana and Missouri. |
| |
At the 3rd Knowledge and Project Management
(KPM) Symposium held 18-20 August in Tulsa, OK, Walt
Lipke presented his research study, “Project Duration
Forecasting – a comparison of EVM Methods and
ES.” |
| |
Also, at the KPM Symposium, Garry Booker
presented a very intriguing idea for implementing EVM,
“Start Small, Scale Up.” It is a staged
approach which allows companies to evolve over time
to a high level of EVM proficiency. Links to two files
are provided on the Presentations page; one is the overall
approach, while the second provides information concerning
the Level 0 stage of EVM maturity. Definitions
of the characteristics and capabilities for Levels 1
through 4 are still in work and will be available at
a future time at the Project Frontier website, www.projectfrontier.com.
It is understood that at Level 2, although cost information
is unavailable at this stage, the full benefits of schedule
performance analysis from the application of ES can
be utilized. |
| |
Dr. Mario Vanhoucke, associate professor
at Ghent University, Belgium, has published an article
in the August issue of Projects
& Profits. The article, “Project
Tracking and Control: Can We Measure the Time,”
investigates the potential of forecasting project duration
and is available on-line at www.iupindia.org/808/pp.asp
for a very nominal charge of 50 Rupees. |
| |
The activity level of the website requests
has continued to be much higher than the norm of last
year. The number of requests for July was 26311
while August had 27035. At this time, over 23
gigabytes of data have been downloaded from the website
over the time of operation, which began in February
of 2006. |
| April
- May - June 2008 |
| |
Two papers of interest are in the April
2008 issue of CrossTalk:
“Does Project Performance Stability Exist …a
re-examination of CPI and evaluation of SPI(t) stability”
by Kym Henderson and Dr. Ofer Zwikael and “Schedule
Adherence: A Useful Measure for Project Management”
by Walt Lipke. The paper by Henderson and Zwikael
has generated interest and debate over the topic of
CPI stability. Letters to CrossTalk
editor are to be published in the coming September issue. |
| |
Request for re-printing the two articles
cited above was received from Institute of Chartered
Financial Analysts of India University Press for their
publication Projects
and Profits. The specific issue in which
these articles are to appear has not been identified,
but will be reported when it is known. |
| |
Likewise, the Quality Assurance Institute
requested permission to reprint the article, “Schedule
Adherence: A Useful Measure for Project Management”
by Walt Lipke. Just as stated for Projects
and Profits, the issue in which the article is
to appear has not been identified, but will be reported
when known. |
| |
With two collaborators, Dr. Jesus Soret
and Dr. Rafael Garcia, lecturers at the University of
Valencia, Spain - Faculty of Engineering, Dr. Diego
Navarro is preparing a book on project management to
be published in Spanish by Diaz de Santos (http://www.diazdesantos.es/ediciones/).
The book includes the Earned Schedule extension
to Earned Value Management. The publication date
for the book and availability for purchase will be reported
when available. |
| |
As reported in March news, Dr. Vanhoucke
in collaboration with Stephan Vandevoorde and Tom Van
Acker are nearing completion of a project management
tool, ProTrack, which incorporates Earned Schedule calculations
and analysis techniques. Up to date information
concerning ProTrack is available at the website, http://www.or-as.be/index.htm. |
| |
As reported in March, Robert Van De
Velde presented “Assessing Schedule Performance
with Earned Value” at the April Project World
Conference in Toronto, Canada. Mr. Van De Velde has
provided the following feedback as to the interest shown
in the presentation:
| |
- The presentation was well
received. Over 100 people attended the session,
and there appeared to be strong interest in
ES. Evidence: the formal feedback from the
session, plus the fact that they took all
copies of material I had prepared for them
and requested additional ones.
- Outside the presentation,
I was often stopped and asked for further
information. I referred them to the
ES website as well as to the recent articles
in CrossTalk.
I believe that there is sufficient interest
to return next year and either do the presentation
again or extend it to cover Schedule Adherence.
- Most of the attendees were
line Project Managers. While they showed
interest, especially those already using EVM,
it was Executives who were most eager to adopt
ES. They recognize the power of ES for
giving them insight into the schedule performance
of the projects in their portfolio.
|
|
| |
At the annual College of Performance
Management Conference held 14-16 May in Clearwater Beach,
Florida, Walt Lipke presented “Statistical Methods
Applied to Project Management.” |
| |
At the annual UK Earned Value Analysis
(EVA13) Conference held 9-13 June in London, Kym Henderson
presented “A Re-examination of CPI and Examination
of SPI(t) Stability,” while Dr. Mario Vanhoucke
of the University of Ghent presented “Measuring
Time: a simulation study of earned value metrics to
forecast total project duration.” The presentations
may be obtained from the conference website, www.evm-uk.co.uk/eva13,
as well as this one. Kym Henderson and Walt Lipke conducted
three workshops which contained information and methods
concerning Earned Schedule. Kym’s solo workshop
was “Applying Earned Value Concepts to Commercial
(IT) Projects.” Walt’s workshop was titled
“Earned Value Management – Advances and
Extensions.” Henderson and Lipke jointly provided
the workshop for “Earned Schedule.” |
| |
It is worthy to note that at the EVA13
conference, Mr. Steve Wake (the coordinator and host)
provided his latest EVM booklet, E.V.A.
in the UK #8 to the attendees as a valued benefit.
In the booklet, Mr. Wake has included information from
Kym Henderson concerning the “EVM 20% Stability
Rule,” and from Walt Lipke, “Earned Schedule.”
The booklet may be ordered from Mr. Wake using either
his email (swprojects@blueyonder.co.uk)
or his website (www.swprojects.co.uk)
at a nominal cost of ~5 British pounds (price varies
with quantity ordered). |
| |
The activity level of the website requests
has continued at a very high level. The number
of requests for March, April and May were 30065, 34910,
and 31959, respectively. Over 21 gigabytes of
data have been downloaded from the website over the
time of operation beginning in February of 2006. |
| March
2008 |
| |
Two papers appear in the April 2008
issue of CrossTalk:
“Does Project Performance Stability Exist …a
re-examination of CPI and evaluation of SPI(t) stability”
by Kym Henderson and Dr. Ofer Zwikael and “Schedule
Adherence: A Useful Measure for Project Management”
by Walt Lipke. |
| |
The paper, “Prediction of Project
Outcome: The Application of Statistical Methods to Earned
Value Management and Earned Schedule Performance Indexes,”
is to be published in the International
Journal of Project Management in February 2009.
The paper, authored by Walt Lipke, Kym Henderson, Dr.
Ofer Zwikael, and Dr. Frank Anbari, is presently available
on-line at www.sciencedirect.com/
for a charge of $31.50 (US). |
| |
On April 16 Robert Van De Velde will
present “Assessing Schedule Performance with Earned
Value” at the Project World Conference in Toronto,
Canada. His presentation is available on the Presentations
page. |
| |
Dr. Van De Velde has developed an add-on
for Microsoft Project which incorporates Earned Schedule,
including the advanced features of schedule adherence,
identification of constraints, impediments, rework and
effective earned value. The product is scheduled
for release commercially in mid-April. Check for
availability at www.projectflightdeck.com. |
| |
Dr. Mario Vanhoucke, University of Ghent,
Belgium, presented on Earned Value Management, including
Earned Schedule, at the head office of BMW AG in München,
Germany on April 4, 2008. The presentation was arranged
by the German Operations Research Society. Dr. Vanhoucke
reports that those in attendance were very interested
and enthusiastic about the topic. The presentation
is expected to be made available on this site in the
near future. |
| |
Dr. Vanhoucke in collaboration with
Stephan Vandevoorde and Tom Van Acker are developing
a project management tool, ProTrack, which is expected
to be ready for beta testing in a few months. |
| |
The activity level of the website reached
another new peak in February at 32,323 requests.
The increased level of activity continued into March,
which concluded with 30,065 requests. |
| January
- February 2008 |
| |
The activity level of the website reached
another new peak in February at 32,323 requests.
The increased level of activity continued into March,
which concluded with 30,065 requests. |
| |
The Winter 2007-2008 issue
of The Measurable
News contains three articles about Earned Schedule:
“PMI – CPM Collaboration Extends to Europe;”
“A Case Study of Earned Schedule to Do Predictions”
by Lewis Hecht; and, “Measuring the Accuracy of
Earned Value/Earned Schedule Forecasting Predictors”
by Dr. Mario Vanhoucke and Stephan Vandevoorde. |
| |
Three articles concerning EVM and ES
have been accepted for future publication. Two
papers are scheduled to appear in the April 2008 issue
of CrossTalk:
“Does Project Performance Stability Exist …a
re-examination of CPI and evaluation of SPI(t) stability”
by Kym Henderson and Dr. Ofer Zwikael and “Schedule
Adherence: A Useful Measure for Project Management”
by Walt Lipke. The third paper is to be published
in the International
Journal of Project Management in February 2009.
The paper, “Prediction of Project Outcome: The
Application of Statistical Methods to Earned Value Management
and Earned Schedule Performance Indexes” is authored
by Walt Lipke, Kym Henderson, Dr. Ofer Zwikael, and
Dr. Frank Anbari. |
| |
A link, EVM
Time Forecasting, has been added to the website
beneath Concept Description.
Project duration forecasting, using EVM time conversion
techniques, is reviewed and compared to forecasting
using ES. |
| |
The link added last month regarding
the PMI Eric Jenett Award for Project Management Excellence
has two additions: a quote from Mr. Jenett to the recipient,
Walt Lipke, and a set of photos. The photos show
the actual award, the presentation, reception and a
meeting of Walt and Kym Henderson with Mr. Eric Jenett.
|
| |
The activity level of the website reached
a new peak in January at 27,392 requests. This
is an increase of nearly 10,000 requests over the previous
high amount. |
