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Earned Value Project Management, 3rd Edition | Quentin W. Fleming, Joel M. Koppelman | Brings EVMS into perspective
 
 


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 Earned Value Proje...  

Earned Value Project Management, 3rd Edition
Quentin W. Fleming, Joel M. Koppelman

Project Management Institute, 2006 - 232 pages

average customer review:based on 18 reviews
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"Earned value" is a project management technique that is emerging as a valuable tool in the management of all projects, including and, in particular, software projects. In its most simple form, earned value equates to fundamental project management.

This is not a new book, but rather it is an updated book. Authors Quentin Fleming and Joel Koppelman have made some important additions. In many cases, there will be no changes to a given section. But in other sections, the authors have made substantial revisions to what they had described in the first edition.

Fleming and Koppelman?s goal remains the same with this update: describe earned value project management in its most fundamental form, for application to all projects, of any size or complexity. Writing in an easy-to-read, friendly, and humorous style characteristic of the best teachers, Fleming and Koppelman have identified the minimum requirements that they feel are necessary to use earned value as a simple tool for project managers. They have also witnessed the use of simple earned value on software projects, and find it particularly exciting. Realistically, a Cost Performance Index (CPI) is the same whether the project is a multibillion-dollar high-technology project, or a simple one hundred thousand-dollar software project. A CPI is a CPI ? period. It is a solid metric that reflects the health of the project.

In every chapter, Fleming and Koppelman stick with using simple stories to define their central concept. Their project examples range from peeling potatoes to building a house. Examples are in round numbers, and most formulas get no more complicated than one number divided by another.

Earned Value Project Management?Second Edition may be the best-written, most easily understood project management book on the market today. Project managers will welcome this fresh translation of jargon into ordinary English. The authors have mastered a unique "early-warning" signal of impending cost problems in time for the project manager to react.


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Earned Value Simplified

I wish I had had this book much earlier in my project management career! The authors of this book are able to bring the esoteric aspects of Earned Value to the masses. Reading this text is easy - not like a reading text book - and the authors provide (somewhat) "real life" case studies to back up their examples.

One author claims to be an expert in Earned Value, and I believe it after reading his explanations - he is able to cut to the essence of the idea without leaving the important details behind. This book is worth the money, especially if you've read other text about Earned Value - you'll appreciate the simplicity of this one.


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Brings EVMS into perspective

Fleming and Koppelman have done a decent job of bringing the complex subject of Earned Value Management into perspective. Starting with an interesting history of the subject from its beginnings in 1965, they have broken the subject down into its components and given a clear explanation of the fundamentals. If you're planning on working in the EVMS field any time soon, I would recommend this as a good starting point to familiarize yourself with the subject.


Where is the rest?

So far I have found two books dedicated to the topic of earned value: this book by Fleming and Koppelman and another book entitled `Using Earned Value' by Alan Webb. Note that I am not listing the earned value `Cliff notes' entitled `Project Management: The Commonsense Approach" by the Lamberts, which will not add to your understanding of earned value management or analysis, and serves, at best, as a memory jogger on the basic concepts.

"Earned Value Project Management, Second Edition" by Fleming and Koppelman provides a good treatment of the history of earned value and of the calculation methods of its core measurements. However the book falls short in terms of methods of analysis and interpretation of these measurements, which is really where project managers need guidance and expertise. Indeed calculations are automated by the scheduling packages (e.g. Microsoft Project, Primavera, etc.), in other words getting the numbers is never the problem (although some packages have had their share of problems doing this), or let's just say it's the easy part. Obviously one needs to understand how the numbers are calculated and what they mean but this part of earned value does not require a whole book about it. The true challenge in earned value management is the analysis part. Once you have the numbers, you need to understand what they mean to your project, how they trend, how they relate/influence one another and most importantly how you should use them in gauging the health of your project. This information then needs to be translated in either corrective actions (which are hopefully proportional to the problem at hand) or inaction (provided that you have made the conscious decision, based on the data, to keep things as they are). I believe that this is where this book falls short. It gives the reader an understanding of the concepts but lacks in the guidance that is required for a true, practical, and day-to-day application of earned value on projects. In another words, it's a good start but not quite enough.



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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4



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