Aerospace Project Management Meets Number 8 Wire

3:05pm 16 September 2010

Earned Value Management (EVM) is a powerful technique for tracking and predicting the progress of projects. It has been used for many years in the American defence and aerospace industries, but has not yet become common practice in New Zealand. This presentation will show how EVM can be simplified to suit New Zealand conditions, with a particular emphasis on agile software development projects.

The presentation is based on 5 years of experience with a simplified, “number 8 wire”, approach to EVM. This simplified approach has not only proven useful on local projects, but has also caught the attention of practitioners back in the United States, who are interested in how it makes EVM more approachable for newcomers and more suitable for agile projects.

EVM provides integrated tracking of progress, cost and schedule. It is most relevant to software projects that have defined budgetary targets.

The presentation will be suitable for those who are new to EVM, and want to know how to use it to better manage their projects. It will also be suitable for those who know traditional “heavyweight” EVM, but have found it impractical on typical New Zealand projects.

About John Rusk

John Rusk is a software architect at Optimation Ltd in Wellington.

He is an active member of the agile development community and the author of an open-source software project.

His articles on Earned Value Management have been published by the PMI, the US Department of Defense and Taylor & Francis Group in the (forthcoming) Encyclopedia of Software Engineering.

He has worked in the Wellington software industry since 1995, creating bespoke software for private and public sector organizations. He has a B.Sc.in Computer Science from Massey University.