How did limiting work packages to one week help management identify problems sooner? Why do organizations use the percent complete rule instead of the cheaper, easier pseudo-earned percent approach?

. \\ A consultant for the US. Forest Service suggested the use of earned value to monitor the 50- : 1 g?\" j plus timber sale projects taking place concurrently in the district. As projects were completed, " new ones were started. Earned value was tried for approximately nine months. After a nine- month trial, the process was to be reviewed by a task force. The task force concluded the earned value system provided good information for monitoring and forecasting project progress; however, the costs and problems of collecting timely percent complete data were unacceptable because there were no funds available to collect such data. The level of detail dilemma was discussed, but no suggestions satisfied the problem. The discussion recognized that too little data fail to offer good control, while excessive reporting requires papenNork and people. which are costly. The task force concluded progress and performance could be measured using a pseudo-version of percent complete while not giving up much accuracy for the total project. This modified approach to percent complete required that very large work packages (about 3 to 5 percent of all work packages in a project) be divided into smaller work packages for closer control and identification of problems sooner. It was decided work packages of about a week's duration would be ideal. The pseudo-version required only a telephone call and yeso answers to one of the following questions to assign percent complete: Has work on the work package started? N0 = 0% Working on the package? Yes = 50% Is the work package completed? Yes = 100% Data for the pseudo-earned value percent complete system were collected for all 50-plus projects by an intern working fewer than eight hours each week. The pseudo-earned value method turned out to be a success. It provided sufficient performance information to monitor more than 50 projects. The key was limiting all work packages to one week whenever possible. This enabled management to keep track of costs and schedule despite the crude reporting method. The Costs and Problems of Data Acquisition