The standard for project management

Figure 5-6. Earned Value in an Agile Context

Traditional EVM metrics like schedule performance index (SPI) and cost performance index (CPI) can be easily 

translated into agile terms. For example, if the team planned to complete 30 story points in an iteration, but only 

completed 25 then the SPI is 25/30 or 0.83 (the team is working at only 83% of the rate planned). Likewise, CPI is 

the earned value (completed features value) to date divided by the actual costs to date or, as shown in Figure 5-6,  

$2.2M / $2.8M = 0.79. This means a result of only 79 cents on the dollar compared to plan (but of course this 

assumes that the prediction is still correct.)

1/10/13

1/2/14

1/5/14

1/10/14

1/2/15

1/5/15

1/10/15

1/2/16

1/5/16

1/10/16

1/2/17

1/5/17

3,000

2,500

2,000

1,500

1,000

500

0

$6,000,000

$5,000,000

$4,000,000

$3,000,000

$2,000,000

$1,000,000

$0

ABC Project Progress

Scope (Points)

Spend

Projected Progress                    Scope Built                    Projected Spend                    Spend

Actual Cost (AC)

Planned Value (PV)

Earned Value (EV)

Schedule Variance (SV)

Cost Variance (CV)

FORECASTING

BILLING

CONTRACTS

SALES

STOCK

CONFIGURATION

REPORTING

SAP INTERFACE

CPI   =

Earned Value

Actual Costs

SPI   =

Completed Features

Planned Features

LEGEN

D

---

70 

  

Section 5

A cumulative flow diagram, illustrated in Figure 5-7, shows the work in progress across a board. If a team has many 

stories waiting for test, the testing band will swell. Work accumulation can be seen at a glance.

Teams have trouble with accumulating work: the team has work in progress instead of work completed. When teams 

have a lot of work in progress, they delay their overall feature delivery. The longer it takes for a team to deliver, the more 

pressure a team will have for yet more features in the same period of time.