Earned Value Evaluation - Essay Example

Project Management Table of Contents Part Earned Value 3 Executive Summary 4 Part 2: Report 4 Introduction 4 Background 4 Main discussion 5 Conclusions and recommendations 6 Reference List 7 Part 1: Earned Value Earned value is simply the value of work that is completed in monetary terms at a specified time of the project. For the purpose of calculating the earned value of a project, planned values needs to be estimated first. Planned value or PV is the expected amount of work to be completed at the end of a specified period (Pinto, 2007). The data reflected in this paper shows that the actual project cost was estimated to be £2.3 billion. It was estimated that such amount shall be spent over a 3 month period. While revising estimates, the time period was extended to another 10 years and cost of the project got escalated to £12.4 billion. Hence, the total time period of the NHfIT project was 10 years while the total costs were estimated to be about £14.7 billion. It is assumed that after the completion of 3 years of the project, about x% of the work got completed. When the project was revised, the amount of work yet to be done would now eliminate the x% to determine the new total work that was to be completed within 10 years and would £12.4 billion. In the end of 2011, the total amount of money spent was £6.46 billion and about 50% of the time was used up. Hence, the PV of the project was 50% of the total allocated amount at the end of 5 years = (50/100) * £12.4 = £6.2 billion Performance rate helps to determine the amount of work that is actually completed as compared to the scheduled performance requirement (Meredith and Mantel, 2008). Based on the assumption that half of the work is completed in 5 years, the performance rate is calculated as 50%. Hence, Earned Value = Performance Rate * Planned Value £6.2 * 50% = £3.1 billion The earned value figures show that the work which was worth £3.1 billion utilized £6.2 billion. Such a project delay and cost overrun were indicative given that there was no outline for project delay. Neither was there any presence of schedules of work to be done or a brief about the causes of delay. Executive Summary The following report is a detailed analysis of the prime causes of failure of national information and technology program undertaken in United Kingdom. The national IT project was aimed at unification of patient records over the digital platform all across the country. The prime causes that have been responsible for its failure have been identified as lack of prime objective, definition of goals, absence of leadership and direction to project, no guidance over security issues associated with patient records and lack of communication with concerned people for the development of appropriate system for project development. Part 2: Report Introduction Project management is process which includes planning, organizing and controlling a given project so that its goals can be achieved. A project is a temporary venture designed to produce a given product, service or obtain a desired result. Project leadership is the emphasis of project managers on proper planning, structuring, developing processes, monitoring and providing solutions to problems in the due course of the project (Merchant and Stede, 2012). Project governance relates to making sure that the project is executed and implementation as per the required standards that is set by the organization implementing the project. Background The NHS National Program for IT (NHfIT) is an initiative taken by the Department of Health in England. The initiate aims at improving the NHS structure of records keeping and also provide better connectivity between general practitioners and hospitals. The method of report keeping will be made more secure by providing only authorized access to such records. Reviews have stated that the initiative is poorly managed, cumbersome and slow. The administrators appointed to manage the project were seen to lack efficiency in performing their responsibilities which has led to the overall poor progress of the initiative (Maughan, 2010). On one of the major hurdles faced by the initiative was the over running of expenditures from the budgeted cost. This implies that fewer measures were taken by the management to control costs. Such inefficiency in management has raised significant doubts amongst the general public regarding the efficiency of the NHS’s operations in the nation. In order to understand the reasons behind such poor project management, the government of the U.K. had undertaken to conduct a performance review of the NHfIT’s activities. This paper discusses the main finding and outcomes of the performance review conducted (House of Commons, 2012). Main discussion The key drawback associated with the national project was the lack of a set of objectives that shall be able to provide some guidance and direction to the project. Department of Health which was a key body in the implementation of this program refused to provide any highlights with reference t project objectives associated with the NHfIT project. There was a lot of ambiguity regarding the aspirations of the entire program owing to which the activities associated with it worked aimlessly. Absence of objectives also removed possibility of having any monitoring system for checking if the project was going as per the key goals (National Audit Office Report, 2006). The project manager can choose and select those objectives which fit best within the governance structure. This allows him to eliminate or alter those objectives that do not confirm with the broader goal of the organization and thus reduce project overruns or delays through proper planning mechanism. This assures a sound understanding of the requirements and investment utilization during the life cycle of the project. Absence of such goals and objectives in the huge government project of UK highlighted the lack of any mechanism for strategy formulation, visioning and communication of the project objectives within the NHfIT program. The UK government has also been largely criticized for the absence of any process of auditing and evaluation the project progress in an ongoing basis. Such absence marks the lack of a proper and systematic governance system within large projects which could have been a source for evaluation and monitoring from time to time and thereby ensuring that it was working as per schedules and as per set standards. Such audits also help to check deviations and help the project focus towards the desired goal. The lack of audit mechanism or an evaluation system of the NHfIT program made no way for questioning failures and the reasons behind it following which there was no way to identify the solutions to the problems behind project failure. Hence prior to refinancing of the project, there was no way to check avoidance of repetitions. There was no strategy for assessing the costs and benefits of the NHfIT program effectively. Project managers use steering committees for the evaluation of conflicts in the project progress. Such committees help in resolution of conflicts that might surface during project implementation and it is the key role of the project manager to seek proper resolution techniques. Such committees often provide solutions that assist in taking the project back on track and also enabling its adherence towards organizational goals and governance standards. The third major criticism towards the failure of the NHfIT program was the absence of recognition as well as enabling of a security system for data management related to patient records. NHS in United Kingdom refused to provide desired privacy and security to patient data for its digital record (Darbyshire, 2001). Reports foregrounding that clinical engagement desired in the project from doctors and medical professionals was not high were also well popularized. This was supported by the report that the interest of NHS doctors dropped to 41% in 2005 from a huge 70% in 2004 (Hendy, 2005). The critical reason behind such a situation of this national level IT project in UK has been the significant failure of project leadership. The presence of some sort of project governance would allow for adequate and proper sourcing of all data that is relevant for the project. The role of project manager in this regard is to facilitate the coordination between the members of team and also the doctors for gaining information access and also developing the IT plan. This also hints towards the lack of guidance from the project lead and also over the project management for lack of information. The absence of privacy in data as well as low level of security in association with the low awareness levels along those associated with the project regarding the relevance and importance of such security pertaining to patient health records. This indicated complete dearth of awareness regarding data security and criticality of personal information for patients and hospitals (McNulty and Ferlie, 2002). Conclusions and recommendations The analysis brings up to the following recommendations: 1. Set up of predefined objectives which are related to the project goal providing the definition and clarity in tracking and monitoring of project and its progress (Hoeksma, 2002). 2. Assuring measurement and tracking of variances and allowing for a proper mechanism for checking and fixing them at regular intervals. 3. Building a training system to facilitate knowledge transfers and training of employees associated with the project of the different criticalities of information used within project management. Reference List Darbyshire, P. 2001. The practice politics of computerised information systems: a focus group study. Nurse Researcher, 8(2), pp. 4-17. Hendy, J., 2005. Challenges to implementing the national programme for information technology (NPfIT): a qualitative study. Bio-Medical Journal, 331(7512), pp. 331-336. Hoeksma, J., 2002. IT strategy lies in ruins as only five trusts hit April EPR targets. Health Services Journal, 57(9), pp. 4-5. House of Commons, 2012. Great Britain Parliament Select Committee on Public Accounts. Assurance for major projects fourteenth report of the Select Committee on Public Accounts. [online] Available at: [Accessed 7 July 2014]. Maughan, A., 2010. Six reasons why the NHS National Programme for IT failed. [online] Available at: http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Six-reasons-why-the-NHS-National-Programme-for-IT-failed [Accessed 7 July 2014]. McNulty, T. and Ferlie, E., 2002. Re-engineering health care: The complexities of organisational transformation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Merchant, K. A. and Stede, V. D., 2012. Management Control Systems. London: Prentice Hall. Meredith, J. R. and Mantel, S. J. 2008. Project Management: A Managerial Approach. London: John Wiley & Sons. National Audit Office Report, 2006. The National Programme for IT in the NHS. [online] Available at: [Accessed 7 July 2014]. Pinto, J. K. 2007. Project Management, Achieving Competitive Advantage. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Read More