Agile EVM Research Paper

A Research Paper and a Discovery Session co-created by SolutionsIQ Thought Leaders, were featured at Agile 2006, an annual conference that brings together techniques, technologies, policies, research and experts in the area of “Agile” software development.

The Research Paper is entitled Agile EVM Earned Value Management in Scrum Projects authored by Tamara Sulaiman PMP, CSM-P SolutionsIQ; Brent Barton, CSM, SCT SolutionsIQ; and Thomas Blackburn PMP, CSM InfoTech. This paper was selected from a field of submissions and was described by the Agile 2006 Research Paper Program Committee as, “A research paper that presents a significant contribution to the field of agile software development.” The paper was judged on its ability to, “Advance the state of the art and potentially enrich the body of knowledge and influence the framework of thought in the field by investigating agile methods in a rigorous scientific fashion.” Sulaiman, Barton and Blackburn presented their paper live at Agile 2006 on July 24.

EVM Paper Abstract

Sulaiman, Barton and Blackburn adopted Earned Value Management (EVM) using values defined in Scrum. The result is called AgileEVM, a project management technique that combines measurements of technical performance, schedule performance and cost performance within a single integrated methodology. It also provides early warning of performance problems while there is still time for corrective action. “The single most important benefit of employing earned value is the cost efficiency reading it provides,” according to Quentin W. Fleming and Joel M. Koppelman. EVM uses values in Scrum, delivers a release date estimate using mean velocity and from this equation, generates an equivalent equation using traditional EVM techniques, thus establishing the validity of using EVM within the Scrum framework. Finally, they used this technique on two projects to further test their hypothesis.

VIEW THE AGILE RESEARCH PAPER