A Practical Guide to Earned Value Project Management, Second Edition (Practical Guides) Review

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(More customer reviews)Since I reviewed the first edition it's only right that I comment on the second edition of Charles and Charlene Budd's book, "A Practical Guide to Earned Value Project Management" published by Management Concepts, 2010.

There are a number of significant changes from the first edition:

They've updated material to match updated definitions and processes.
They've added an entire section on implementation that's divided between "full" implementations as would be required for government contracts involving progress payments, etc. and various "partial" implementations for use by project managers in non-government funded projects.
They're added a section on Emerging Practices, which includes both Earned Schedule and Critical Chain Project Management.

The whole new section on Emergent Practices is particularly interesting. It includes the following four topics, the first two are described fairly simply while the last two have a chapter each:

Performance-Based Earned Value: this describes the concept discussed by Solomon and Young in their 2007 book of the same name which adds technical requirements, assigning value for partial completion of product requirements, and integrating risk management tasks into EV.

Schedule Margin:Schedule Margin can be used to provide a sort of schedule buffer at key points in a schedule to mitigate risk. The book notes that this concept hasn't been used very often, but there are initiatives underway to encourage its use.

Earned Schedule: Extensive discussion on why it is that Schedule Variance is increasingly inaccurate and/or misleading from about half or two-thirds of the way into a project and then details Walt Lipke's work to create a time based (rather than dollar or effort based) way to measure schedule variance. Basically, since all the metrics in EV are in dollars (or hours or effort) both Cost Performance Index and Schedule Performance Index often end up being ratios of dollars. This is fine for Cost Variance and Cost Performance Index since those are expense based measures, but can give odd results for Schedule Variance and Schedule Performance Index. For example, at project completion the SPI = 1, regardless of whether the project is 2 weeks early, right on time or 1 year late. This makes SPI of limited use in predicting completion date. The chapter has examples and recent work (2009) by Lipke and others using simulations and historical data that shows that Earned Schedule added into EVM is consistently better at predicting completion dates.

Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM): The Budds are no strangers to Theory of Constraints and they give a good overview of the history of CCPM in both Single and Multi-Project variations. They also have a short and simple explanation of how buffer management works. They end the chapter with examples of how CCPM and EV can be aligned as well as references to several industry cases in which they were used together on the same projects.

The Second Edition builds upon the strong foundation of the first addition and adds in some of the latest thoughts on EVM. Also, it is, as far as I know, the only Earned Value book that specifically discusses how to use Earned Value and Critical Chain together.

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Product Description:
The Best Resource on Earned Value Management Just Got Better!
This completely revised and updated guide to earned value (EV) project management is the go-to choice for both corporate and government professionals. A Practical Guide to Earned Value Project Management, Second Edition, first offers a general overview of basic project management best practices and then delves into detailed information on EV metrics and criteria, EV reporting mechanisms, and the 32 criteria of earned value management systems (EVMS) promulgated by the American National Standards Institute and the Electronic Industries Alliance and adopted by the Department of Defense.
This second edition includes new material on:
-EV metrics
-Implementing EVMS
-Government contracts
-Time-based earned schedule metrics
-Critical chain methodologies
In addition to this new material, authors Charles and Charlene Budd have reorganized some existing material to enhance readability while retaining the same trusted and comprehensive approach as the first edition. They offer insights into the mechanics of EVMS for a thorough understanding of the processes and a practical presentation of how to best implement EVMS practices.

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