Pinnacle Insights

The Control Account Manager or CAM plays a critical role in an Earned Value Management System. He/She is responsible for the planning, coordination and achievement of all work within a Control Account and provides a single authority for all scope, technical and cost issues for the CA – not an easy task. 

As most of you probably are aware, Deltek MPM, currently in the Maintenance Support phase will be moving into Sustaining Support as of December 31, 2018. There will be no further updates or fixes to the software offered by Deltek after that. The state of MPM that it is currently in, will remain.

If you are in the market for a cost management tool your short list likely includes Deltek Cobra.  Cobra has a long history of playing a role in both large and small implementations of earned value tools with customers of various sizes.

Often these two terms are used interchangeably, but they mean very different things to those of us who have been implementing project management and project controls systems.  As you can imagine, explaining the difference is difficult, but it is the ultimate compliment when a client acknowledges the distinction and the contributions of our Implementation Consultants.  It just so happens that it was a recent client's praise that inspires this blog article and I hope it will generate discussion on the topic.

In Part 2 of this series, Schedule Analysis, Part 2: Why Should I Do It?, it was stated that schedule analysis increases confidence in the schedule and its results. It provides information as to where the schedule needs to be improved and how it needs to be improved. 

In Part 1 of this series, Schedule Analysis, Part 1: What Is It?, provided a brief introduction to schedule analysis. This article discusses why should a schedule analysis be performed. But first, a point of clarification. Schedule analysis and Schedule Risk Analysis (SRA) are two different things. 

At the most recent NDIA Integrated Program Management (IPM) Division Meeting, John McGregor, Director of Earned Value Management for OSD Performance Assessment & Root Cause Analysis (PARCA) took the stage to discuss the latest updates related to EVM threshold requirements for DoD contracts. During the presentation, John clarified that DoD Instruction 5000.02 is finalized, signed and in full affect, even though the document looks like it may be in draft form.

A schedule is a time-model of how you as the supplier or manager plan on executing your project. It represents the project scope, resources, assumptions and constraints of the project. Like a cost model, the time model or schedule should respond to changes.