About a year ago we wrote about the new DCMA surveillance approach based on metric based analysis to determine the need and areas of focus for surveillance audits. In an attempt to bring more efficiency to the surveillance process, DCMA defined a series of metrics in relation to all ANSI 32 criteria. The goal is to better help determine where contractors EVMS deficiencies are and identify the need for an audit.
For a contractor to generate these same metrics, they would likely have to use a combination of their Earned Value Management integration tool (i.e. Deltek Cobra) along with a tool like Excel to generate similar metrics in order to track their performance against these updated metrics. In an effort to minimize the amount of manual analysis required for a contractor to analyze the programs performance vs these new metrics, Deltek Acumen 8 has automated this process creating an interface with Deltek Cobra to analyze and review the Earned Value (EV) data generated on a program.
Here are some of the new features & capabilities in Deltek Acumen 8.0:
- As with the rest of Deltek’s EPM Suite, Acumen 8.0 sports a new user interface, making all tools with the EPM suite look and operate in a similar way
- At a minimum you will need Deltek Cobra 8.1 (Target date release 12/15)
- Deltek Acumen 8.0 will be able to ingest Deltek Cobra data, the IMS (Primavera P6, Deltek Open Plan, Microsoft Project) and Work Authorization Documents (from PM Compass or Excel Source)
- Deltek Acumen will package the results and import into Deltek wInsight Analytics for dashboard use by management
- Approximately 131 DCMA metrics (this will be updated as DCMA verifies and finalizes the metrics)
- Improved Schedule forensics:
- Primavera P6 month to month comparison made easier (resolving issue around different naming of monthly files)
- Ability to compare select months from the same workbook
Here is a snap shot, courtesy of Deltek, which shows how the relationship between the source data (Deltek Cobra, IMS, WADs), Acumen and Winsight Analytics will work:
Within Deltek Acumen 8.0, you can find the Earned Value Analytics System (EVAS) metrics on the Acumen metrics tab.
As you can see in the left pane, the metrics are broken down into the ANSI 748 major categories (Organization, Planning, Accounting, Analysis, Revisions) and then broken down into the 32 lower level criteria.
The ribbon analysis will look very similar to the schedule metrics ribbon analysis currently available in Deltek Acumen. Below you can see the diagnostics view within Acumen. As you can see, when you hover over a metric within the ribbon, the DCMA metric description appears.
