Sunday, July 18, 2010

Explain Earned value is a Measure of Progress for Software Engineering Assignment of SMU MBA

“Earned value is a measure of progress. Explain this statement.” This is the question of this SMU MBA assignment for Software Engineering (MI0024). Students of Sikkim Manipal University with Information System (IS) specialty MBA MI0024 can write the assignment. There are some other Software Engineering assignments also of SMU MBA - COCOMOL model, Linear Sequential Model and 4GL Technologies.

Earned value analysis provides the project manager with an indication of progress, but an assessment of the information provided is somewhat subjective. It is reasonable to ask whether there is a quantitative technique for assessing progress as the software team progresses through the work tasks allocated to the project schedule. In fact, a technique for performing quantitative analysis of progress does exist. It is called earned value analysis (EVA).

The earned value system provides a common value scale for every (software project) task, regardless of the type of work being performed. The total hours to do the whole project are estimated, and every task is given an earned value based on its estimated percentage of the total.

Stated even more simply, earned value is a measure of progress. It enables us to assess the “percent of completeness” of a project using quantitative analysis rather than rely on a gut feeling. In fact, Fleming and Koppleman argue that earned value analysis “provides accurate and reliable readings of performance from as early as 15% into the project”.

To determine the earned value, the following steps are performed:

1. The budgeted cost of work scheduled (BCWS) is determined for each work task represented in the schedule. The work of each software engineering task is planned.

2. The BCWS values for all work tasks are summed to derive the budget at completion,

BAC. Hence, BAC=_(BCWSk) for all tasks k

3. Next, the value for budgeted cost of work performed (BCWP) is computed. The value for BCWP is the sum of the BCWS values for all work tasks that have actually been completed by a point in time on the project schedule.

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