Earned Value Management (EVM)

Complying with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-11 and American National Standards Institute/Enterprise Application Integration (ANSI/EAI) Standard 748-A is easier and less costly with the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution.


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	Products and technologies
	Microsoft Office Project 2007 Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server 2007 Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 Microsoft Office Excel 2007 Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Windows Server 2003 or Windows Server 2008

Government agencies today are under ever-increasing pressure to improve management across all project portfolios. Today's agency executive must achieve critical outcomes, respond rapidly to business changes, and make strategic project decisions earlier than ever in the project life cycle—all with increased visibility into the decision-making process. Project managers are asked to reduce project costs while improving forecasting and to compress schedules while increasing schedule accuracy.

Proven project management techniques and earned value management (EVM) can help you meet these expectations. EVM provides a proven, objective way to measure the value of work completed based on the budget applied to that work. In addition, EVM requires a considered and disciplined approach to project management, including constant attention to budget and scope, ongoing analysis of project metrics, and integration of cost and schedule information.

Proactive project management with EVM requires you to address a set of discrete tasks:

Create well-defined definitions of your project outputs or work.
Develop a budget and schedule to drive those outputs.
Baseline your schedule and budget, refreshing the baseline only with formal approval of scope change.
Update the schedule regularly (at least monthly).
Track actual progress and costs.
Analyze deviations in expected progress and costs.
Update your forecasts.

Whether you are a project manager or an agency executive, the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution project planning, management, and assessment tools can help you meet your agency’s EVM needs. The solution automates the gathering and reporting of earned value metrics from all phases of the project, including detailed project reports and aggregated, larger-scope reports. These allow you to track variances in your project progress and to assess the data more easily—even in the project’s earliest stages. The result is greater portfolio control and project predictability.

Microsoft Office Project Professional 2007 provides detailed views and earned value reports. These reports allow project managers to assess project performance early, accurately, and often in the project life cycle, to identify performance issues and plan deviations, and to correct issues or adjust forecasts. Project information is then published to Microsoft Office Project Server 2007.

Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 provides earned value metrics and automated reports at the detailed task and project levels. You can configure reports, scorecards, and even executive dashboards based on project information published from Office Project Professional.

Microsoft Office Project Portfolio Server automatically synchronizes data from Office Project Server, delivering integrated metrics that are ready for analysis and decision-making. Instead of spending your time creating cross-portfolio reports, you can focus on prioritizing and optimizing project schedules and budget allocation based on earned value analysis and performance metrics. In addition, you can evaluate risk, strategic value, financial value, and alignment with organizational priorities to fine-tune and justify decisions. You can even set up role-level security to meet your collaboration or data-security requirements.

Microsoft Office Excel 2007 and Microsoft Office Project Web Access work in tandem, enabling you to publish reports as formal project documentation, such as Excel reports and illustrative graphs. You can also prepare reports for online viewing or preserve them to help address any future questions about the project or evaluate a course for future project improvement.

If it's vital to government, it's mission critical to Microsoft.

The following Microsoft partners can help you implement earned value management (EVM) using the Microsoft Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solution.


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Friedrich Klatt and Associates' (FK&A) EVM solution for government contractors and other enterprises combines proven industry practices and leading technologies to measure earned value, planned value, and actual costs, providing the insight for compliance, accountability, and process improvement. It gives executive sponsors, project managers, and representatives from associated functions the measuring and tracking capabilities for full project management cycle feedback. Leveraging the analytical power of a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 data mart, the EVM solution provides a process and tools for measuring actual performance against a plan to identify and correct problem areas before control is lost. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, Microsoft Office Project Web Access, and SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services provide a user-friendly Web interface for reporting, analysis, and administration. FK&A’s EVM solution won FK&A and Pcubed recognition as the "2007 Microsoft Worldwide Partner of the Year Information Worker - Enterprise Project Management."

LMR Solutions is a full-service program and project management firm that helps organizations evaluate and standardize on program and project management processes, training, Microsoft Office Project technologies, and staff augmentation. In particular, aerospace and defense (A&D) companies are faced with challenges on multiple fronts and recognize the value and importance of systemization, efficiency, and scalability. A&D companies are realizing that programs such as new airplane technology development are becoming more prohibitively costly and time-consuming, making it critical to develop new design and technology innovations rapidly, capture and reuse product and process knowledge, and substantially shorten the overall Internet Messaging Program (IMP) to IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) life cycle. To make it even more complicated, A&D companies must operate within a globally disparate environment and be able to collaborate with partners, suppliers, and customers. LMR Solutions can help with the Microsoft EPM solution.

QuantumPM LLC's EVM solution enables the project manager to control project scope and the organization to produce valuable metrics. Whether you use Microsoft Office Project as a stand-alone desktop application or as an integrated EPM solution, this unique solution combines the power of work breakdown structures (WBS) for scope management with the already powerful scheduling engine of Microsoft Office Project. With these key best practices combined in one powerful tool, the user gains the ability to manage scope, budget, schedule, and EVM reporting in one place. The QuantumPM EVM solution improves accuracy and efficiency for the project manager and streamlines program control and reporting for the entire organization. EV Manager allows you to reduce the time, cost, and effort needed to capture and report critical project information by controlling your project scope, importing actual financial data, eliminating complex calculations, and generating the standard EVM reports automatically.

Robbins-Gioia, Inc. leverages the company's 25 years of experience and custom program management methodologies to successfully deliver projects on budget and on time while managing significant change, optimizing business processes, and achieving a sustainable competitive advantage. Robbins-Gioia provides business results to non-profit organizations, large government agencies, and major commercial companies, and can help you get control of your capital projects with the Microsoft EPM Capital Projects solution.

Safran Software Solutions AS knows and understands the importance of timely information and has developed robust reporting capabilities and highly appreciated management graphics for Microsoft Office Project users. The reporting capabilities include professional earned value and performance measurement, which provides better project visibility and insight into how time, cost, and resources are spent and the overall health of projects. For the U.S. market, we include the American National Standards Institute/Enterprise Application Integration (ANSI/EIA) 748-A monthly reporting requirements and Contract Performance Report (CPR) formats 1–5. While most other reporting systems for Microsoft Office Project tend to be separate, this solution supports repetitive gathering of data to keep data current and prepare the required reports. Safran has set a new standard for project visibility and control by providing robust reporting capabilities, seamlessly integrated into Microsoft Office Project, that do not appear in any other software specializing in the Microsoft Office Project technology.

Find a partner

Search for additional partners in the Microsoft Public Sector Partner Solution MarketPlace, an easy resource for finding technology partners that offer a broad range of products, services, and solutions based on Microsoft technologies. The MarketPlace includes packaged software, solutions offerings, and training from Microsoft Gold Certified Partners, Microsoft Certified Partners, and registered members.

Microsoft makes no representations or warranties, either expressed, implied or statutory, regarding any company presented herein or its products or services. The inclusion of a company does not imply endorsement by Microsoft of the company or its products or services. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.