Written out in full: a QSO 340 Module 6 earned value analysis with a work package table of planned value, earned value and actual cost, cost and schedule variances and indices, two estimates at completion, the to-complete performance index, causes of the variance and corrective actions. Searches like "qso 340 module 6 assignment", "qso340 module 6 earned value analysis assignment" and "qso 340 module 6 example" land here.
The QSO 340 Module 6 example, in full
Week 20 by the Numbers: An Earned Value Analysis of a Food Bank's Warehouse System Project
[Student Name]
Southern New Hampshire University
QSO 340: Project Management
Module Six Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.
Week 20 by the Numbers: An Earned Value Analysis of a Food Bank's Warehouse System Project
The Baseline
The composite food bank's warehouse management system project has a budget at completion of 580,000 dollars for planned work, plus a 60,000 dollar contingency reserve held by the sponsor. The schedule baseline, adjusted after the fast-tracking decision in Module 4, plans cutover in week 36. This review uses data at the end of week 20, when requirements and design should be complete, configuration should be about three-quarters done and hardware installation should be finished. Earned value management rests on three numbers (Fleming & Koppelman, 2010). Planned value is the budget attached to the work the schedule says should be finished by now. Earned value is the budget attached to the work that is in fact finished. Actual cost is the money really spent to finish it.
Status by Work Package
Table 1 shows the three measures for each work package under way or finished by week 20.
Table 1
Earned Value by Work Package, End of Week 20
| Work package | Planned value | Earned value | Actual cost | Percent complete |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Project management | $30,000 | $30,000 | $32,000 | On plan |
| Requirements and design | $60,000 | $60,000 | $58,000 | 100% |
| System configuration (budget $128,000) | $96,000 | $70,400 | $98,000 | 55% |
| Hardware (budget $58,000) | $58,000 | $58,000 | $66,000 | 100% |
| Data cleanup (budget $22,000) | $18,000 | $17,600 | $17,000 | 80% |
| Total | $262,000 | $236,000 | $271,000 |
Note. Composite figures. Earned value equals each work package's budget multiplied by its percent complete.
Variances and Indices
Cost variance is earned value minus actual cost: 236,000 minus 271,000 dollars, or negative 35,000 dollars. The project has spent 35,000 dollars more than the budgeted value of the work it has completed. Schedule variance is earned value minus planned value: 236,000 minus 262,000 dollars, or negative 26,000 dollars, meaning the project has completed 26,000 dollars less work than planned by this date.
Dividing earned value by actual cost gives a cost performance index of about 0.87: each dollar spent has produced about 87 cents of planned work. Dividing earned value by planned value gives a schedule performance index of about 0.90: the project is progressing at about 90 percent of the planned rate. Both indices are below 1.0, and together they describe a project that is behind schedule and over budget at the same time, which rules out the comforting explanation that it is simply spending ahead of plan.
Forecasting the Final Cost
If the project continues at its current cost efficiency, the estimate at completion is the budget divided by the cost performance index: 580,000 divided by 0.871, or about 666,000 dollars. That is about 86,000 dollars over budget, more than the entire 60,000 dollar contingency reserve. If the overrun so far proves to be a one-time problem and the remaining work is done at the budgeted rate, the estimate at completion is the actual cost plus the remaining budgeted work: 271,000 plus 344,000 dollars, or 615,000 dollars, which the contingency could absorb. The to-complete performance index, the cost efficiency needed on remaining work to finish within the 580,000 dollar budget, is about 1.11. Practitioners of earned value have long observed that a project's cost performance index tends to settle early and seldom recovers much afterward (Fleming & Koppelman, 2010), so the more pessimistic forecast deserves serious attention.
Where the Variance Comes From
Two work packages explain almost all of the problem. System configuration accounts for 25,600 dollars of the schedule variance and 27,600 dollars of the cost variance: it is only 55 percent complete, not 75, and has already cost 98,000 dollars. The cause is scope growth. Warehouse staff requested custom fields for tracking donor sources and the funder's reporting categories, each approved informally by the vendor without going through change control. Hardware finished on time but cost 8,000 dollars more than budgeted, because extending wireless coverage into the freezer required more access points than the site survey estimated. The other work packages are close to plan.
Corrective Actions
Four actions are recommended. First, stop informal changes: every configuration request must now go through the written change control process in the project plan, with its cost and schedule effect estimated before approval. Second, review the custom fields already added and defer any that are not needed for go-live to a second phase after the holiday season. Third, release 24,000 dollars of contingency for the second configuration consultant considered in Module 4, which would recover about two weeks and protect the week 36 cutover, and ask the sponsor to approve it now rather than after the schedule slips further. Fourth, re-baseline the remaining configuration work with the vendor so that future earned value reports measure progress against a realistic plan (Project Management Institute [PMI], 2021; Kerzner, 2022). If these actions work, the project should finish near the 615,000 dollar forecast, within the contingency; if the cost performance index remains near 0.87, the sponsor will need to seek additional funding or reduce scope.
Reporting the Findings to the Sponsor
The analysis must reach the sponsor in a form that supports a decision rather than as a table of indices. The status report for week 20 will therefore open with one sentence: the project is about 10 percent behind schedule and 13 percent over budget on the work completed, and at current performance it would need about 26,000 dollars more than its contingency. It will then state the cause, informal configuration changes and higher freezer wireless costs, and the decision required, approval to use 24,000 dollars of contingency for a second consultant and a freeze on informal changes. The indices themselves will appear in an attachment for the board treasurer, who is familiar with them. Presenting the problem this way matters because a sponsor who sees only a cost performance index of 0.87 may not grasp that the holiday deadline is at stake, while a sponsor who hears only that the project is behind may not see that the fix costs money. Earned value earns its place in project management precisely because it connects schedule and cost in one measurement, and the report should preserve that connection in plain language. The next review, at week 24, will show whether the corrective actions have moved the indices toward 1.0.
References
Fleming, Q. W., & Koppelman, J. M. (2010). Earned value project management (4th ed.). Project Management Institute.
Kerzner, H. (2022). Project management: A systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling (13th ed.). Wiley.
Project Management Institute. (2021). A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK guide) (7th ed.). Project Management Institute.
How this QSO 340 Module 6 example is structured
The assignment follows the order of an earned value review. It sets the baseline, presents the three core measures by work package, calculates variances and indices with formulas shown, and then forecasts the final cost. A section traces the variances to specific causes, because indices say that something is wrong but not what. Recommendations close the paper with the decision the sponsor must make.
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QSO 340 Module 6 questions, answered
What does QSO 340 Module 6 usually cover?
The sixth module of a project management course commonly covers project budgeting and cost control, including earned value management: planned value, earned value, actual cost, cost and schedule variances, performance indices and forecasts of final cost. Assignments ask students to calculate these for a project and interpret them.
What is earned value?
Earned value is the budgeted cost of the work actually completed. If a 96,000 dollar work package is 55 percent complete, its earned value is 52,800 dollars, regardless of how much was actually spent. Comparing earned value with planned value shows schedule performance, and comparing it with actual cost shows cost performance.
How is the estimate at completion calculated?
A common method divides the budget at completion by the cost performance index, which assumes future work will continue at the current cost efficiency. Another adds the remaining budgeted work to the actual cost to date, which assumes future work will be performed at the budgeted rate.