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.
01Define quality expectations
02Build quality into process
03Inspect / test
04Analyze defects
05Improve