Applying EVM to Agile Project Management
To apply measurement techniques like EVM to agile project management, PMs should focus on the expected outcome rather than the method. The use of burn-down charts as a measurement and reporting tool provides many of the benefits of EVM, but in a different form. If the burn-down charts are kept scrupulously current and analysed prudently, PMs can use them as a key indicator of project progress, problems and risks.
Some agile proponents have taken the application of EVM to agile programmes to a further level of rigor in a method they call, appropriately enough, AgileEVM. In a paper presented to the IEEE, a team of agile developers had proposed a disciplined, quantitative technique for applying EVM to agile methods (Sulaiman, Barton & Blackburn). AgileEVM uses story points, rather than tasks performed, as the basic unit of measurement and measures iterations planned against iterations completed to derive the value delivered.
As in EVM, Agile Earned Value Management (Exhibit 3) requires initial baselines such as number of planned iterations, number of planned story points in a release and planned budget for the release. Also needed are the total number of story points completed, number of iterations completed, actual cost and the number of story points added or deleted from the release plan.