The NAVAIR Earned Value Management Tool Kit - available at the Defense Acquisition University web site. (When you reach this site, answer yes to the missing certificate)This site by the way has a wealth of resources for everything related to program management. If you're looking for something, start there.
Here's NAVAIR's restatement of the obvious.
|
NAVAIR EVM Guidance For Success And Failure
Of Projects |
|
|
Successful
Projects |
Failing Projects |
|
▪
Effective project
planning |
▪
Inadequate project planning |
|
▪
Effective project
cost estimating |
▪
Inadequate Effective project cost
estimating |
|
▪
Effective project
measurements |
▪
Inadequate Effective project measurements |
|
▪
Effective project
milestone tracking |
▪
Inadequate Effective project milestone
tracking |
|
▪
Effective project
quality control |
▪
Inadequate Effective project quality
control |
|
▪
Effective project
change management |
▪
Ineffective project change management |
|
▪ Effective development processes |
▪
Ineffective development processes |
|
▪ Effective communications |
▪
Ineffective communications |
|
▪ Capable project managers |
▪
Inexperienced project managers |
|
▪ Capable technical personnel |
▪
Inexperienced technical personnel |
|
▪ Significant use of specialists |
▪
Generalists rather than specialists |
|
▪ Substantial volume of reusable material |
▪
Little or no reuse of technical material |
Like all restatement of the obvious, many things are not so obvious.But notice the emphasis on Planning, Cost Estimating, Performance Measures, Quality, and Change Management. All activities that cause project churn. Even in the best of agile development, if the goal of the project keeps changing, and the agile team rapidly responds to these changes, money is being burned for work that may or may not be recoverable.
This is a fundamental "hidden cost" of poorly defined agile projects in the same way it is for poorly defined traditional projects.
If I create work product that is then tossed, it is a non-recoverable sunk cost
So ask these questions for your project, no matter the method used. And ask anyone who brings you a technology solution to your project - How does you new technology improve the probability of success?
If you notice in the NAVAIR table, people and processes dominate the conversation. Tools are a distant third.
