Is your schedule variance (SV) looking a little off in your earned value calculations? Don’t worry, we’re here to help you get back on track.
Scheduled variance is calculated as SV = EV – PV, where EV is earned value and PV is planned value. You’re basically comparing where you are in the project with where you planned to be at this point in time. It shows you the difference between the schedule you thought you’d be sticking to and what the team has actually delivered, so it’s great for tracking performance.
A negative SV matters because it can mean missed deadlines, contract risk, or cascading delays. So if you’re SV has slipped the wrong side of zero, here are some ideas to pull it back.
1. Re-baseline when the plan no longer reflects reality
Maybe SV looks wrong because you’re far from being able to achieve any kind of average performance as the schedule has moved so far from the baseline. This could have happened if there are a lot of change requests or there have been significant delays.
If the schedule is altered irreversibly, it’s time to re-baseline.
However, don’t think of baselining as a way to get out of a hole! It does wipe the slate clean but it’s not a get-out-of-jail card. You need to approach re-baselining with care, get buy in from senior stakeholders, get the proper approvals and document the changes. When all of that is in place and your revised plan is approved, you can update the schedule. And hopefully that will make your SV look a lot better.
2. Crash the schedule (strategically)
Crashing is where you add extra resources to speed up the work. If your project is struggling with delays because you don’t have the people, then adding extra resources could help you get back on track. For example, add an extra developer to help speed up the work, or authorize overtime so team members who want to earn a bit extra can work extra hours. Open the site at the weekend so you are working more days.
However, balance this course of action against the cost and risk of bringing in additional people. If it’s going to take a lot to train them up, you might not close the scheduling gap as far as you thought.
3. Fast track where you can
Fast tracking is another schedule compression technique. It’s where you overlap tasks that were sequential, so you’ll have to go through the schedule and identify where activities were planned in a linear way. Then consider where you can bring them in so they run in parallel.
There are some tasks where you can’t do this – you can’t paint walls that haven’t yet been built. But with documentation and some software development activities, it could make sense to have these running in parallel with other work.
There is a risk to fast tracking: you might end up having to do some work again or revisiting tasks. If an activity on a parallel track changes what you need to do, then you’ll have to revisit the other task again. To give you a practical example from one project we saw recently: staff training material was written while the software was still being developed. It then had to be updated as the software evolved and didn’t look quite the same as the screenshots by the time it was finished.
However, it was an easier job to edit the materials, and it took less time than having to start the materials from scratch once development was done.
4. Prioritize critical path tasks
The critical path is the route through the project where if one of the activities slips, the end date slips. These are the tasks you want to prioritize because they will have the biggest impact on your schedule performance in relation to hitting your final milestones.
In our experience, most schedule variance comes from slippage on this path. Highlight the critical path, if you don’t already know what tasks are on it. Make sure the team knows that these activities are essential and should be protected.
You could assign more senior resources with more experience to work on those, focus on removing roadblocks and making sure non-staff resources like machinery are available when needed and simplify dependencies to help this work stay on track.
5. Tighten change control
Finally, you can revisit your change control processes. Another major cause of delay is poorly managed scope changes. Improve the governance to prevent scope creep. Educate the team about the process. Review any open changes and decide on how these are going to be incorporated into the schedule – or whether they are going to be left to one side for now.
Talk to clients about how the change control process works (or should work) and minimize the expectation that extras ‘just get done’. When changes are approved, be sure to work through the impact on the schedule and make the necessary updates so it doesn’t look like you are suddenly behind.
Schedule variance isn’t the end of the world – although your stakeholders might think that when you show them the SV values! Be honest about your project’s current schedule performance and talk about what you are doing to get back on track. Use the ideas above to create a robust action plan and share that with your team.
The schedule variance value is a gift: it shows you early on that there are issues and allows you and the team to do something proactive about it. You can act quickly and deliberately to put actions in place to work in different ways, with the goal of bringing SV closer to that zero score – or even ahead!