Question: As a project management professional, it is important for you to be able to review numbers and report on what they are saying. It is also important for you to be able to use software that helps you keep timelines and keep the project running on time and smoothly. This assignment will continue to help prepare you for your responsibilities.

Respond to the Following Problems

You are a project manager on a project that uses earned value management. The project has the following budget and status:

Project Duration (months):

14

Current Reporting Period (month):

6

BAC:

$387,000

Cumulative PV:

$68,345

Cumulative AC:

$78,379

% of the project completed through the reporting period:

19%

Estimate to Complete:

$294,677

Based on this information, determine the following:

1. Cumulative EV
2. Schedule Variance (SV)
3. Schedule Performance Index (SPI)
4. Cost Variance (CV)
5. Cost Performance Index (CPI)
6. EAC (bottom-up)
7. VAC (bottom-up)
8. TCPI

Based on your calculations in Question 1 above, respond to the following:

1. What is the status of project accomplishment performance through the current reporting period? Why?
2. What is the status of project cost performance through the current reporting period? Why?
3. Is the project projected to complete over or under-budget? Why?
4. Interpret the TCPI metric.

Based on your calculations in Question 1 above, an inexperienced and arrogant project analyst from the project management office has computed an additional metric: Cost Schedule Index, which equals SPI * CPI. He wants you to report this metric to the customer, instead of SPI and CPI separately. What should you do and why?

The program manager doubts your numbers. In particular, he does not believe your EAC number and requests that you calculate two independent EACs. In particular, he wants the following IEACs calculated from rows two and four in Table 23-5 in Snyder, (2013).

1. Compute IEAC1= ((BAC- EV)/CPI) + AC
2. Compute IEAC2= ((BAC- EV)/(SPI*CPI)) + AC
3. Interpret IEAC1
4. Interpret IEAC2
5. Based on items 1-4 above, what do you think the program manager will request from you regarding the bottom-up EAC?

You are having a hallway conversation with the same project analyst from Question 3, who is realizing that he may not know as much about earned value management as he thought when he joined the company. Still, he is convinced that the following statements below are correct. How would you respond to him based on each statement (i.e., formulate a specific response and supporting rationale for each statement below)?

1. EAC becomes Cumulative AC at project completion.
2. Cumulative EV can be greater than BAC at project completion.
3. EAC can be smaller than BAC at project completion.
4. ETC can be greater than 0 at project completion.