Cost control is about decisions, not accounting alone
A PM needs enough financial visibility to understand whether the project is consuming more or less than planned and whether the remaining work can still be delivered within the approved envelope.
Three EVM concepts
| Question | Practical answer |
|---|---|
| PV | Planned Value — the budgeted value of work planned by a point in time. |
| EV | Earned Value — the budgeted value of work actually completed. |
| AC | Actual Cost — what the completed work actually cost. |
From these, two familiar indicators are:
- CV = EV − AC. Negative means the earned value is below actual cost.
- SV = EV − PV. Negative means less value has been earned than planned by that point.
- CPI = EV / AC.
- SPI = EV / PV.
Use these as signals, not as a substitute for understanding why the variance exists.
Quality is built into the work
Quality management includes planning how quality will be achieved, managing the processes that produce the deliverables, and checking outputs. Testing everything at the end is not a complete quality strategy.
Quality is designed, not inspected in at the end
QA can find defects, but quality begins when the team defines what acceptable behavior looks like. Clear acceptance criteria, testable requirements, known browser/device support and agreed performance expectations make quality cheaper to achieve.
Read cost alongside progress
Budget information becomes meaningful when connected to actual completion. If spending rises because a large amount of rework is happening, “80% of budget spent” is not useful without the reason.
If the team has spent ₹80,000 but has only produced ₹70,000 of the budgeted work value expected at this point, the PM should investigate why. The number is a signal for a conversation about efficiency, scope, estimation or rework—not a verdict by itself.
Take a small project and define five quality criteria before development starts. Then define what evidence would prove each criterion has been met.