Spending is not progress.

The answer, on this project, is 30%.

Thirty percent of the building, for thirty-eight percent of the money.

Every dollar that left the bank bought 79 cents of building. And it's worse than that: the work isn't just costing more, there's less of it than there should be. You're over budget and behind schedule — simultaneously — and the cost report said you were fine.

Spending money is not progress. It never was. This is the entire reason earned value exists.

The three numbers

Earned value management has a reputation for being complicated. It isn't. It's three numbers, and you already understand two of them.

Planned value is the promise. By the end of month six, our baseline said we'd have completed 400 thousand worth of work. That number came straight out of the schedule we spent fifteen weeks building — the budget, spread across the timeline.

Actual cost is the invoices. 380 thousand has genuinely left the bank. No mystery, no judgement. Ask accounts.

Earned value is the one nobody's tracking, and it's the only one that tells the truth. It's the value of the work that is physically standing on site, priced at what you budgeted for it.

And here's the formula. Brace yourself:

Earned value = physical percent complete × the budget.

That's it. If a work package was budgeted at 100 thousand and it's genuinely 30% built, you have earned 30 thousand. Not because anyone paid you — because the work exists.

Why it needs Week 9

Look hard at that formula, because it has a dependency that sinks most implementations.

Physical percent complete. The one we fought for back in Week 9 — square metres poured, spools installed, welds tested. Countable. Walkable. Arguable.

Not duration percent. Not "the foreman reckons about eighty." Feed a soft number into earned value and you don't get a rigorous management system — you get the same guess as before, wearing a suit and carrying a spreadsheet. Worse, because now four levels of management believe it's mathematics.

Earned value is only ever as honest as the physical progress underneath it. Every organisation that has been burned by EVM was burned exactly here.

The three curves

Put all three on a chart against time and the picture becomes impossible to misread.

The grey line is what you promised. The amber line is what you've spent. The green line is what you've built.

When green sits below grey, you are behind — less work exists than you planned.

When green sits below amber, you are over budget — you paid more than the work is worth.

Notice what happens when you only look at grey and amber, which is what a normal cost report gives you. Two lines, tracking close together, looking reassuring. Green is the line nobody drew — and green is the only one describing your project.

Next week we turn these gaps into indices you can put in a report. But the picture is already doing the work.

The baseline you're measuring against

One more thing, and it's the foundation the whole edifice sits on.

Planned value comes from a baseline — scope, schedule and budget locked together into one integrated thing. What gets built, when it gets built, and what it costs, all agreed, all frozen, all consistent with each other.

That integration is the point. A schedule baseline that doesn't match the cost baseline produces earned value numbers that are worse than useless: precise, authoritative, and wrong.

And it doesn't move. Not because the project is late. Not because it's over budget. The only thing that moves a baseline is an approved change to the scope — the single door from Week 10.

Move it for any other reason and you've deleted your own evidence. There's now nothing to measure against, the variance history is gone, and next month's report is an opinion with decimal places.

Compare it to what you spent and you learn about cost. Compare it to what you promised and you learn about time. Earned value is the anchor because it is the only one of the three that is tied to something real — work you could walk out and touch.

Practical insight

Take your last monthly report and find the two numbers on it: what was budgeted to date, and what has been spent.

Then go and find the third. What percentage of each work package is physically complete — measured, not estimated? Multiply by the budget and add it up.

If that number is smaller than what you've spent, you have a problem that your cost report has been quietly not mentioning. And you now have about six months to do something about it.

Key takeaways

✔ "We've spent 38% of the budget" tells you nothing about how much building exists.
✔ Planned value is the promise: the budget spread across the schedule.
✔ Actual cost is the invoices: what's left the bank.
✔ Earned value is the truth: physical percent complete × the budget.
✔ EVM stands or falls on physical percent — soft percentages make it a dressed-up guess.
✔ Earned below planned means behind; earned below actual means over budget.
✔ A normal cost report shows planned and actual — the two lines that can't see either problem.
✔ The baseline only moves for approved scope change. Move it for anything else and you delete your own evidence.

What's coming next

We have three numbers and a chart that finally tells the truth.

Next week we squeeze them. Two simple ratios turn those gaps into a diagnosis you can act on — how efficiently you're turning money into building, how fast you're turning time into progress, and what it means when one of them is fine and the other is falling.

The numbers are on the table. Now we make them talk.