Earned Value Early Results

We have our first reporting period under our belts, and I am very excited about the EV results.

In this fictionalized representation of our first project, we see the period % complete reporting by the team leader:

This evaluation of our status leads to the following period values for EV:

You'll notice that while 145 hours were spent instead of only 120, we also saw 8.2% EV, instead of the planned 6.63%. However, the question we have is, was this enough extra EV to justify the hours spent? In our calculations we have the answer:

We're still all green because the EV was indeed enough to overcome the overspending. Notice that the CPI is roughly $1.02 - this means that the EV just barely covered the cost overrun for the period (we got $1.02 effort out of our team for each project $1 planned). Thus, while we spent over $17K in the period on labor instead of just over $14K, the project is projected to end early, and still come in under budget. What this also shows, is that we'll need to watch this team's hours closely over the coming weeks to make sure this level of efficiency is maintained.

Our second team had a more modest hours overage, but still managed a healthy start on EV:

Leading to an even rosier bottom line report:

So far, this seems like a realistic view of real project progress. Obviously, there's still a ways to go. BTW - it didn't take even close to 15 minutes to enter and analyze the data.