Wil Fencer is a large timber and Christmas tree farmer who is attending a project management class in the fall, his off season. When the class topic came to earned value, he was perplexed. Isn't he using EV.
Each summer Wil hires a crew to share fields of Christmas trees for the coming holiday season. Sharing entails having a worker use a large machete to share the branches of the tree into a nice, cone shape tree. Will describe his business as follows:
I count the number of Douglas fir trees in the field ("24,000") Next, I agree on a contract lump sum for sharing with the crew boss for the whole field ("$30,000").
When partial payment for work completed arrives (5 days later, I count or estimate the number of shares (6,000 trees). I take the actual as the percent of the total to be shared, multiply the percent complete by total contract amount for the partial payment [(6,000/$30,000 = 25%), (.25 * $30,000 = $7500)].
Is Wil over, on, or below cost and schedule? Is Wil using earned value?
How can Wil set up a scheduling variance?