Agile and Earned Value – A Metric for PMOs?

This week I headed over to Arsenal football ground for the Project Controls Expo. It’s primarily aimed at people who work in the heavier project management industries like construction, manufacturing, utilities, oil & gas etc. As the name suggests it is all about project controls – planning, scheduling and the like.
I decided to pop in and see what the Expo would be like for PMO people (great if you’re working in these industries and these types of roles). Whilst there I decided to listen to a presentation from Sellafield called ‘Agile and Earned Value’. I initially thought, Sellafield and Agile?? Gawd this could easily be Mr Burns’ Springfield Nuclear Power Plant if Agile is being used! Luckily they are just using Agile for some of their software related projects, not for reactor building!!
I wanted to include a few highlights here and some of the slides because I know some PMOs are becoming more actively engaged in supporting Agile projects in their organisation. The earned value aspect of Agile projects could be one way the PMO could monitor these projects.
Stephen Jones, Programme Lead at Sellafield and Chairman of the APM PMC SIG carried out the presentation, he has also written a whitepaper to support it.