Most of the discussion around Earned Value Management starts and ends with the Earned Value Management System (EVMS) based on ANSI-748-B and the NDIA (National Defense Industry Association) Earned Value Management Intent Guide (EVMIG).
In recent meetings of the Program Management Systems Committee, these 6 Business Management Systems are now included in the assessment of an Earned Value Management System.
This sounds like a complex approach to program management, but in fact it is the minimum for success. For the success of any nontrivial project, you must:
- Know how much things are going to cost, how much it is costing on a weekly and monthly basis . This is in the accounting system.
- How much money you're going to need in the future for the planned work and materials - this is the Estimating system.
- How you are making progress to plan, what the plan is, and what are the units of measure for that progress - this is the Earned Value system.
- How you're looking after the material you bought for your program. The is the Material Management System.
- How you are keeping track of the equipment or material the customer may have given you? This is the Property Management System.
- How do you buy stuff for the program, the planned budget, the accounts payable for this stuff, and the obligate funds needed to pay these invoices. This is the Purchasing System.
Even for agile software development projects, someone owns the money you are uing. Someone whats to know what did you do for my money? Someone wants to know when will you be done and how much is this boondoggle going to cost when your done? All projects, including Agile software projects do not live in isolation, they live inside a businesses and must adhere to the business processes for spending other people's money.
The notion that Agile - as defined in things like Scrum, DSDM, XP and the like - is project management ignores completly the external processes of not only PMBOK and general business management processes. So when you hear Agile Project Management, ask where can you find the data residing in the 6 system here?