Earned Value Analysis

Learning Goal: I’m working on a business question and need guidance to help me learn.

Option A

Project Revive LLC is a consulting firm of highly charged and accomplished project managers whose main stream of revenue comes from managing the turnaround of failing projects. As a consultant with Project Revive LLC, you will study, analyze, and manage a failed project from NearlyFree.com. NearlyFree.com is a fictitious company and the project documents for NearlyFree.com project scenario are located in course resources for this assignment. The NearlyFree.com project was originally scoped to develop and deploy an automated Web-based training system for new employees to reduce the workload and cut down personnel resources required to complete the new employee orientation (NEO) training.

As a veteran member of the Project Revive team, you already know the value of continually examining performance throughout a project to further define and update project data. Special attention to documenting and identifying problems is required in time to make appropriate adjustments. The earned value management (EVM) technique is often used in this type of analysis. Continue your analysis of the failed project by applying the EVM technique to examine performance based on what was accomplished.

Your Role

For Option A, you are the project manager.

Requirements

Microsoft Project is the required software tool for this course due to its wide industry acceptance and its use in many project management professional roles. To make this easier, you have the ability to download and install your own version of MS Project from the Capella Microsoft Imagine WebStore using the instructions provided in the MS Imagine section of the course overview. See the Software Preparation and Technology Access activity for more information.

Practice using MS Project in this course helps prepare you for future professional PM roles and responsibilities; please use MS Project for those tasks supported by MS Project. If you have access to other tools such as MS Visio, MS PowerPoint, and MS Word that you believe may still meet the requirements of this course, please discuss your selected alternative with your instructor.

Use the PMBOK Guide as the model for developing the deliverables.

Earned Value Analysis

Deliverable: Develop an Earned Value Analysis report of the current failed project.

Complete the following:

• Use Microsoft Project to show earned value in a list of tasks that measure of the cost of the work performed up to a certain date (the current date) based on the .
• Consider how you can apply this analysis of the failed project to a successful project turnaround.

Address the following topics. Where necessary, define assumptions you made.

• Apply an earned value technique.
• Explain the value of the information provided through the EVM technique.
• Analyze project success based on earned value calculations.
• Explain project decisions based on earned value calculations.
• Explain how you will apply earned value calculations to a successful project turnaround.

Use the MS Project functionality to:

• Display project summary information and report.
• Create Project reports.
• Export project plan cost data into Excel.

Preparation

Use the software of your choice to develop the deliverables for this assessment.

This assignment has one deliverable:

• Develop a comprehensive Earned Value Analysis report.

Deliverable Format

• References: There is no set number of references required for this assignment. Use scholarly or academic sources where applicable.
• Format:
  • Use the Microsoft Project to obtain project costs information.
  • Use your choice of MS Word, MS Visio, or MS PowerPoint to develop the comprehensive analyses.
  • These analyses are professional documents and should therefore follow the corresponding Academic and Professional Document Guidelines PDF, including single-spaced paragraphs.
  • Use APA style and format for references and in-text citations.