What is Earned Value Management (EVM)?

Earned Value Management (EVM) is a vital project management technique used to evaluate a program's performance and progress. It does this by quantitatively assessing project performance through comparisons of planned work with actual work completed. The core components of EVM—namely Planned Value (PV), Earned Value (EV), and Actual Cost (AC)—allow project managers to analyze variances in cost and schedule, providing insights about how well the project is performing against its baseline.

By using EVM, project managers can identify potential issues early in the project lifecycle, enabling proactive management of resources and effort to keep the project on track. This technique supports critical decision-making, enhancing risk management and project forecasting by aggregating various performance metrics into understandable performance indicators, such as Cost Performance Index (CPI) and Schedule Performance Index (SPI).

The options related to stakeholder identification, team dynamics, and regulatory compliance, while important to different aspects of project management, do not capture the essence of Earned Value Management, which is specifically about performance measurement and control through the comparison of actual work accomplished to what was planned.