The Fuzziness of Earned Value Management in Practice
I have never had the opportunity to manage a project where I needed to manage the budget. As a public librarian working in adult programming and outreach, I did manage our annual programming budget, but that's a different kettle of fish. The primary idea there was to pace ourselves with booking author events and other programs and, at the end of the fiscal year, procure needed equipment and other relevant items to prevent ending with a surplus. When I went through formal education to learn project management principles, we learned about Earned Value Management (EVM) and how it helps to determine project health by evaluating the variances and performance of the project triangle: scope, schedule, and cost. Each side balances against the other, so that whenever one area is adjusted, the other two are affected. It's a useful visual; you can't add items to a project scope (extending the scope line of the triangle) and keep the triangle together without affecting either the timel