Blog / News | Pinnacle Management Systems

An Overview of EVMS forProject

Written by Pinnacle Management Systems, Inc. | Saturday, November 10, 2012
EVMS forProject is designed to manage projects both large and small, and to scale up to handle hundreds of projects and users in even the largest enterprises. It was designed from the ground up to work closely with Microsoft Project Server (2007 and 2010) and SharePoint.  It is unique among earned value management software in its ability to seamlessly synchronize schedule and resource data from Microsoft Project Server.
 
EVMS forProject was designed around the EVM principles and processes as outlined in the Electronics Industry Alliance 748 – Guidelines for Earned Value Management Systems (EIA-748).
 

Key Benefits

  • Improve project performance measurement and management visibility
  • Promote consistency of practice across the enterprise
  • Meet widely-adopted industry and government EVMS guidelines
  • Increase user adoption of EVM

Features

Organization
  • Develop project Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) in EVMS forProject, or import WBS from Microsoft Project Server
  • Supports both Performing and Responsible Organization Breakdown Structure (OBS)
  • Element of Cost (EOC) Structure
  • Financial Breakdown Structure
  • Unlimited enterprise custom fields (text, number, date, flag) on structures
  • Support for Control Accounts, Summary Level Planning Packages, Work Packages, Planning Packages, EV Milestones and intermediate Tasks
Planning & Budgeting
  • Financial period calendars support weekly or monthly EV process, with summary reporting calendars (quarters, years, etc.)
  • Define resources in EVMS forProject or import from Microsoft Project Server
  • Element of Cost (EOC) breakdown for direct costs such as labor, material, travel, ODC
  • Enterprise configuration for indirect/overhead cost categories and calculation rules
  • Enterprise or project-level rate tables with escalation
  • Configurable calculated Result Units and calculation rules
  • Interactive Control Account Planning interface
 
Cost / Schedule Integration
  • Robust, configurable synchronization with Microsoft Project Server
  • Synchronize Baseline, Forecast, Status and Actual data from schedule
  • Allows multiple schedules to be combined into a single EVMS project
  • Import resources from schedule, or plan resources directly in EVMS
Performance Measurement -- Configurable EV methods including:
  • 0/100, 50/50 and other start/finish percentages
  • Units complete
  • Discrete milestone
  • Measured milestone
  • Percent complete
  • Technical measurement rules
  • Direct BCWP entry
  • Apportioned effort
  • Level of effort
Users can enter status in EVMS forProject or synchronize from Microsoft Project Server. Budgeted Cost of Work Performed (BCWP) / Planned Value calculated instantly in all planning units and result units and currencies
 
Cost Tracking
  • Import actual costs either weekly or monthly
  • Track actuals at Work Package or Control Account level
  • Incremental or cumulative values
  • Maintain transaction history
Forecasting
  • Track ETC and EAC in EVMS forProject or import from Microsoft Project Server
  • ETC and EAC instantly available at all levels of detail and in all planning units, result units and currencies
  • Ten (10) standard independent EAC (iEAC) calculations
  • Support top-down or bottom-up forecasting
  • Manual forecast by either ETC or EAC
Variance Analysis
  • Earned value metrics calculated and displayed instantly, including CV, SV, CPI, SPI, CV%, SV%, VAC, VAC% and more
  • EV performance metrics instantly rolled up from details to summary levels
  • Variance thresholds can be defined and used to highlight views and reports

Change Management

Integrated project change log tracks changes to:
  • Negotiated contract cost (NCC)
  • Authorized, unpriced work (AUW)
  • Undistributed budget (UB)
  • Distributed budget (DB)
  • Management reserve (MR)
  • Over target baseline (OTB)
  • Contract Performance Report (CPR) header & footer logs
  • Ability to close periods to baseline changes
  • Easily produce change log reports and export to Excel
Reporting
 
Full set of commonly-used EV performance reports and charts, including:
  • Cost/schedule performance report
  • Performance history report
  • Cost/schedule variance trend chart
  • Cost/schedule performance index trend chart
  • EAC comparison / trend chart
  • Control Account Plan (CAP) report with Excel export
  • Contract Performance Report (CPR) Formats 1-5
  • Format 1 – Work Breakdown Structure
  • Format 2 – Organization
  • Format 3 – Baseline Changes
  • Format 4 – Staffing
  • Format 5 – Explanations and Problem Analysis Export all reports and charts to PDF, Excel, JPG and other formats
  • Reports and charts viewable in both Windows and Web clients
  • Batch reporting for weekly/monthly reporting cycle

System Architecture

EVMS forProject 2010 is a true multitiered earned value management software application. The EVMS forProject architecture includes EVMS forProject Professional 2010 and EVMS forProject Web Application clients in the front-end tier.
 
The front-end applications communicate with the middle tier only through the forProject Server Interface (FSI) Web services, which in turn communicate with the business object layer. Business objects use the databases through the data access layer (DAL). The business objects, DAL, and primary databases are hidden from the clients.
 
System Requirements
  • Microsoft Office Project Server 2010
  • Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2
  • Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition
Other supported platform components:
  • Microsoft Office Project Server 2007 (SP2 or later)
  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (SP2 or later)
  • Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (SP3 or later) – Enterprise or Datacenter editions
  • Windows Server 2008
  • Windows Server 2003 (SP2 or later) with .Net 3.5 (SP1)

Learn more about our EVMS forProject services.

Talk to a Pinnacle professional regarding a forProject solution -  Give Us a Call or