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TEAMFLY260 MEASURING THE VALUE OF WORK

Issue 3: What If the Project Workscope Changes?
Does It Invalidate the EVA?

We have already discussed at length the issues associated with change control and
scope management. Wherever we have mentioned EVA, we talked about the im-
portance of maintaining a valid baseline. We talk about freezing the baseline. Then
we give multiple illustrations of when and how it is okay to modify these data.

Before you accuse us of being inconsistent and confusing, we need to review a
few points that were made earlier. These were:

• There must be a baseline plan for the EVA methods to work.
• There are legitimate conditions under which the baseline can be changed.
• No changes to the baseline should be made without a reason for the change,

a set of details about the change, and an audit trail for all changes.
• There must be a formal, structured, and heeded system for change control

and scope management.

Which all lead us to ask: If the project workscope changes, does it invalidate
the EVA? The simple answer is no, it does not. However, in order to maintain a
valid baseline for EVA, we need to integrate the change control practices with
the EVA practices. All that you need to know to do this was discussed in Chap-
ter 7.1. Rather than repeat these illustrations here, we direct your attention to
Chapter 7.1, Part 3.

Issue 4: How Do I Manage the Baseline for Projects Where the
Baseline Changes with Each Phase of the Project?

We continue now to look at one more issue regarding maintaining a valid baseline
for EVA when the defined workscope keeps changing. In this instance, we ad-
dress the common situation of a progressively expanding definition of the work at
each phase of a development project. We described such projects in Part 4 of
Chapter 7.1. We direct your attention to that material to see how it is possible to
maintain an EVA baseline as each phase further defines the work and schedule.

This is indeed a challenging situation. But it is one that can be fully addressed
and dealt with in such a way as to support the EVA process.