The Earned Value Management is used in project management to measure the performance of software development projects.
Before the design is made available, establish your baseline phase-by–phase, for coding and testing. Every project activity (task), must have clearly defined completion criteria. This will allow you to objectively decide if it is “done.” Agile views focus on plans versus actuals and the value delivered to the users. EVM people believe that a project is a failure if it fails to deliver the required functionality on time and within budget. Agile developers consider a project successful if it delivers 90% of the functionality the customer requested on time and within budget. The backlog would contain the remaining functionality, as well as the defects. To get high EVM scores, however, many EVM users would hide missing functionality and poor quality and wait for maintenance personnel to find them. This is incorrect. Does the agile customer agree that the project was successful if 90% of the most important things are delivered on time and within budget.
Agile “developing” the scope for a project “as they go along” is a problem. It’s just an excuse to not put more thought into the requirements. It is better to have a large contingency fund of both budget and time that can be used to meet the requirements. You must manage the budget well and ensure that the module is completed on time. It is not complete if there are several critical defects in the SIT (System Integration Testing). This can be an example of a situation in which vendor drawings are delayed and are not submitted at once. Due to differences in circumstances, the review time might differ from the actuals. The reviewer or reviewers may not be able work 100% due to other constraints, such as multiple projects.
Software development is easier if you break down the task into manageable pieces. Integration testing is not an usual practice in waterfall models. The software will not meet the requirement unless it works well when it is integrated. It usually happens after all modules have been completed. Therefore, EVM is not the best indicator to measure performance during the module build phase. Integration testing and unit testing are two different activities. Each activity has its own budget and is an independent activity. Plan your projects based on the effort you put in, but schedule them based on the duration. A task that takes x hours to complete does not mean it will be charged. It does not necessarily mean that it will be completed in x hours. It could take longer. It is important to consider resource utilization.
There are many ways to measure project performance. Client requirements should be discussed and finalized. After finalizing the scope, the project manager should communicate the plan for each module’s release to the client immediately following unit testing. There should be a week buffer time to accommodate any minor requirements. After all modules have been released, testing and integration time can be considered. Then, end-to-end demo and UAT times can be estimated. To avoid any unexpected circumstances, it is wise to track the development according the plan.