One of the best things that I love is interacting with people. When they ask questions, I always go back to the basic principles! That's what happened to me when a few learners in the corporate training I delivered asked if traditional EVM principles are even required in Agile principles. Here are some thoughts, first explaining the EVM concepts and then extending them to Agile.
Earned Value Management has two parts. The first part is lagging indicators that tell how the project is performing at a snapshot in time. The second part is the leading indicators that forecast how much more time and money will be required to finish the project!
Lagging Indicators
This involves the Schedule Variance (SV) and Cost Variance (CV) expressed in currency units and Schedule Performance Index (SPI) and Cost Performance Index expressed as ratios. In order to compute any of these four measures, there are three things that are required. The first is the planned value (PV, sometimes also called budget at completion (BAC) or budgeted cost of work performed (BCWP)) of what we expected to compete, the second is the earned value (EV) of what we have earned at a snapshot in time and the actual costs (AC, sometimes also called the actual cost of work performed) incurred to generate the EV. Then, the lagging indicators can be computed as follows:
Formula | Explanation |
SV = EV - PV |
|
CV = EV - AC |
|
SPI = EV / PV |
|
CPI = EV / AC |
|
Now, let us think about the applicability of lagging indicators in Agile. While the focus of Agility is on the team to manage itself, we need to ensure that the team is able to commit reasonably (and no external influence exists on the team to pressed for commitment) and self-organize themselves to deliver on the commitments (of course, there are always deviations). In the daily standup, when the team is marking completion of stories (task) for the user story to be ready for testing and marking validation complete (test cases) and the stories are accepted incrementally through the iteration, they are demonstrating earned value (velocity based on stories completed) towards the planned value (planned velocity). There is always a cost to the iteration (Rajagopalan, 2019) representing the actual costs.
First, let us look at the leading indicators. There are four formulas depending upon the level of accuracy and confidence required.
Formula | Explanation |
EAC = AC + ETC |
|
EAC = BAC / CPI |
|
EAC = AC + (BAC - EV)/SPI |
|
EAC = AC + (BAC - EV) / SPI * CPI |
|
As you can see in the above explanation, forecasting (i.e., leading indicators) is a business need. Regardless of whether a team is focused on plan-driven or change-driven approach, the business always has the question of how long it will take for you to deliver on the remaining scope or MVP.
If the lagging indicators (SPI, CPI, EV, AC) exist, and BAC (PV) is focused more on the remaining backlog size for the MVP, is there a reason why EAC calculations do not apply in Agile? The answer is Yes. In fact, Agile uses the burn rate to compute the rate at which the team burns through the backlog. Furthermore, there is one more leading indicator that people compute. That is To-Complete-Performance-Index (TCPI). This is computed as follows. Does the work and cost remaining relevant to Agile? Then, why question whether EVM extends to Agile or not?
- TCPI = Work Remaining / Cost Remaining
- TCPI = BAC - EV / BAC - AC
It should, however, be pointed out very clearly that in Agile, we should measure a few more things. These include cycle time, lead time, WIP, and Backlog Size (Remaining work). This is because, as mentioned before, the scope of work is constantly changing in Agile because of the constant feedback mechanism and the notion of embracing change.
References
Rajagopalan, S. (2019). Agile iterations also involve cost. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2019/04/test-post.html