PM Excellence Academy
Module 9 of 12 · Managing Execution 2
Percent complete, effort burned, and schedule each tell a partial truth. Read alone, any one misleads. Read together, they tell you exactly where the project really stands — while you can still act.
Illustrated module guide · the complete walkthrough · companion to the Quick ReferenceModule 8’s business rhythm said to check financial signals every week. Name the signals you’d look at — and why “we’re 60% done” isn’t enough on its own.
The trap
Ask “how’s the project?” and you’ll usually get one number. “We’re about 70% done.” It sounds like an answer. It isn’t. Percent complete with no cost says nothing about margin. Fee burned with no progress says nothing about value delivered. Schedule with no effort says nothing about how hard the team is pulling to hold the date. Each number, alone, tells the most flattering story it can.
Percent complete, burn rate, and schedule only tell the truth when you read them together. One number alone will lie to you.
The PM’s job in monitoring is not to collect metrics. It is to triangulate — to hold the numbers against each other until the real story appears.
The signals
Three signals, each blind on its own, honest in combination.
How much of the work is actually done — value earned, not effort spent.
How much of the budget has been consumed to reach this point.
Where the work sits against the dates the plan committed to.
?Pause & predict.
A task is reported “on schedule” and “40% of fee burned.” You then learn it is only 25% complete. What is the real story — and is “on schedule” good news here?
The comparison
A number on its own is data. A number against the plan is information. Variance — the gap between what you planned and what actually happened — is where the project tells you the truth. The discipline is simple and relentless: for progress, cost, and schedule, always ask “versus what we planned?” A 144k effort isn’t good or bad until you know it was supposed to be 120k.
The instrument
Earned Value is just the disciplined way to read those three signals at once. It rests on three measured quantities:
The budgeted cost of the work you planned to have done by now.
The budgeted cost of the work you have actually completed (% complete × budget).
What the completed work has actually cost so far.
From those three, two variances tell the whole story:
Positive = ahead of plan on value delivered. Negative = behind.
Positive = work cost less than budgeted. Negative = over budget for the work done.
That is the entire idea: are we delivering the value we planned (schedule), and is that value costing what we said it would (cost)? The Quick Reference turns this into a calculator you can run on a live task.
The example
Recall the Oakhaven Public Safety Campus from the finance modules. At Design Development the dashboard reads like this — and now you can read it honestly:
| Design Development | Planned (earned) | Actual (effort) | Variance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Value of work done | $120k | $144k spent | −$24k cost |
| Schedule | On plan | 14 days late | −14 days |
| Billing | — | $41k unbilled | at risk |
Any single row could be explained away. Together they are unambiguous: the phase earned $120k of value but consumed $144k of effort, is two weeks late, and is carrying $41k it hasn’t billed. That is a phase losing $24k of margin in plain sight — exactly the kind of signal the weekly rhythm exists to catch early.
The close
Reading the numbers is half the job. The other half is what the Accountable Owner does next: when the team is absorbing client-caused rework on nights and weekends, the owner doesn’t let the hours quietly vanish into the budget. They surface the cause and put the cost in front of the client — because the team’s hours are not free to give away. The Coordinator records the overrun; the People Pleaser absorbs it; the Owner converts it into a decision.
Pick one live task. Pull its percent complete, fee burned, and schedule and read them together — then run the earned-value numbers in the Quick Reference. If value earned trails cost spent, name the action this week: a scope conversation, a staffing change, or a billing catch-up.
?Challenge — from memory.
From memory: name the three signals you read together, and the two earned-value variances and what each one tells you.
The one idea
Percent complete, burn rate, and schedule only tell the truth when you read them together — one number alone will lie to you.