New publication: EVM Stability

Stability of Earned Value Management forecasting

Statistical forecasting and control

While the research on the accuracy of Earned Value Management (EVM) methods has resulted in various publications and the book "Measuring Time", the research on forecasting stability using EVM methods has not resulted in a lot academic publications. But times are changing! The paper entitled "A study of the stability of Earned Value Management forecasting" written by Mathieu Wauters and Mario Vanhoucke has been published in Journal of Construction Engineering and Management.

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Abstract: In this paper, the authors focus on the stability of Earned Value Management (EVM) forecasting methods. The contribution is three-fold. First of all, a new criterion to measure stability that does not suffer from the disadvantages of the historically employed concept is proposed. Secondly, the stability of time and cost forecasting methods is compared and contrasted by means of a computational experiment on a topologically diverse data set. Throughout these experiments, the forecasting accuracy is reported as well, facilitating a trade-off between accuracy and stability. Finally, it is shown show that the novel stability metric can be used in practical environments using two real-life projects. The conclusions of this empirical validation are found to be largely in line with the computational results.