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Business Management Book Store > Business Management books beginning with E
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Earned Value Project Management, 3rd Edition |
Author: Quentin W. Fleming
Published: 2006-02 |
List price: $49.95
Our price: $32.97
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As of: January 08th, 2009 07:26:35 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Dissapointed
Unfortunately I never received my book so I can not give any opinion.
Regards
 Too much narrative .. needs examples
This is a book that talks a lot about Earned Value in terms of history and usefulness; how it advanced since 1967 C/SCSC to today's EVM standard.
To my amazement, unfortunately, this book does NOT show you how to calculate EARNED VALUE. It keeps talking about how to use it to assess progress and predict future progress but it does not show how to get it.
This is a MAJOR flaw in my opinion.
I finished reading the book and I am disappointed. It needs more examples. There are better books in the market on this.
 Earned Value Simplified
I wish I had had this book much earlier in my project management career! The authors of this book are able to bring the esoteric aspects of Earned Value to the masses. Reading this text is easy - not like a reading text book - and the authors provide (somewhat) "real life" case studies to back up their examples.
One author claims to be an expert in Earned Value, and I believe it after reading his explanations - he is able to cut to the essence of the idea without leaving the important details behind. This book is worth the money, especially if you've read other text about Earned Value - you'll appreciate the simplicity of this one.
Brings EVMS into perspective
Fleming and Koppelman have done a decent job of bringing the complex subject of Earned Value Management into perspective. Starting with an interesting history of the subject from its beginnings in 1965, they have broken the subject down into its components and given a clear explanation of the fundamentals. If you're planning on working in the EVMS field any time soon, I would recommend this as a good starting point to familiarize yourself with the subject.
 Where is the rest?
So far I have found two books dedicated to the topic of earned value: this book by Fleming and Koppelman and another book entitled `Using Earned Value' by Alan Webb. Note that I am not listing the earned value `Cliff notes' entitled `Project Management: The Commonsense Approach" by the Lamberts, which will not add to your understanding of earned value management or analysis, and serves, at best, as a memory jogger on the basic concepts.
"Earned Value Project Management, Second Edition" by Fleming and Koppelman provides a good treatment of the history of earned value and of the calculation methods of its core measurements. However the book falls short in terms of methods of analysis and interpretation of these measurements, which is really where project managers need guidance and expertise. Indeed calculations are automated by the scheduling packages (e.g. Microsoft Project, Primavera, etc.), in other words getting the numbers is never the problem (although some packages have had their share of problems doing this), or let's just say it's the easy part. Obviously one needs to understand how the numbers are calculated and what they mean but this part of earned value does not require a whole book about it. The true challenge in earned value management is the analysis part. Once you have the numbers, you need to understand what they mean to your project, how they trend, how they relate/influence one another and most importantly how you should use them in gauging the health of your project. This information then needs to be translated in either corrective actions (which are hopefully proportional to the problem at hand) or inaction (provided that you have made the conscious decision, based on the data, to keep things as they are). I believe that this is where this book falls short. It gives the reader an understanding of the concepts but lacks in the guidance that is required for a true, practical, and day-to-day application of earned value on projects. In another words, it's a good start but not quite enough.
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