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The Ariba Implementation at MED-X case is designed to teach students how to analyze a program that is experiencing problems and recommend solutions. Specifically, the case introduces students to earned value analysis and program oversight for an e-procurement technology program. The case centers on MED-X's need to quickly discover why the company's e-procurement implementation project was not going according to plan. Once a cause has been discovered, students will need to make a recommendation to fix the problem. Data for the simplified program, consisting of two concurrent projects, is given to students, who should in turn analyze the project using earned value analysis. The case is an easy introduction to program management and oversight for executives and MBA students, and teaches the essentials of earned value project management.

Students will learn how to control and act in oversight of large complex programs, as well as how to apply earned value metrics to analyze a simplified program consisting of two projects. Analyzing the project enables students to learn the strengths and pitfalls of the earned value approach. From a management decision perspective, the case gives students the tools to succinctly answer the questions: How much will the project cost? How long will it take? What is wrong with the project?

Sets out to examine earned value management (EVM), a project management technique that relates resource planning to schedules, technical costs and schedule requirements.

Provides an example of how EVM can be implemented in a data warehouse project and how it can be used as a tool to diagnose and solve problems.

EVM is based on the belief that the value of the project increases as tasks are completed and therefore the earned value of a project is a measure of the real progress of that project.

Offers a significant analysis of EVM, its benefits and pitfalls.

The most important function that facilitates construction organizations to accomplish profit maximization is cost control. However, the absence of a well‐established cost control system has caused failures to many Thai contractors especially during the current economic recession period. To comprehensively understand cost control systems in practice, this study theoretically assessed effectiveness as well as the deficiencies of the ‘traditional’ systems vis‐à‐vis the ‘effective’ systems. In addition, by contrasting what are found in ‘effective’ systems but not found in ‘traditional’ systems, critical attributes most contributing to the systems' successfulness were identified so that the improvement steps can be suitably prioritized. The validated findings indicated remarkable contrasts between ‘traditional’ and ‘effective’ systems. Two critical aspects, including advancement of cost control framework and systematic participation of site personnel in cost control, were found to be the major differences. Interestingly, similar conditions were encountered in various countries such as Greece, Pakistan and Australia; hence suggestions from this study could be internationally useful.

The purpose of this paper is to develop models to forecast final budget and duration of a highway construction project during construction stage.

Highway construction project data are collected and analyzed to find out factors affecting project final budget and duration before developing the forecasting models, research for which is based on the principle of Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The forecasting results obtained from the proposed method are compared with those obtained from the current method based on earned value.

Factors affecting final budget and duration are presented. The forecasting results obtained from the proposed method based on ANN application are more accurate and stable than those obtained from the current method based on earned value.

Factors affecting final budget and duration may differ if applied in other countries, since the project data were collected in the Kingdom of Thailand. The forecasting models, therefore, must be reconsidered for better outcomes.

The study presents a useful tool for the highway construction project manager to predict project final budget and duration. The results can potentially provide early warning of over‐budget and schedule delay.

The ANN models to forecast final budget and duration of highway construction projects during the construction stage, developed by using project data reflecting continual and seasonal cycle data, can provide better predicting results.

The purpose of this paper is to extricate value-added exports in information and communications technology (ICT) industry earned by Taiwan and Korea. Additionally, the authors decompose Taiwan and Korea’s gross exports into various meaningful components.

The authors use the inter-country input-output (ICIO) table which endows with cost structures of industries as well as trade information, facilitating in keeping track of the flow of products and value-added. The ICIO table used in this paper comes from the World Input-Output Database. The authors also use the way Wang et al. (2013) decomposed the intermediate goods exports into various components to provide further insights.

The empirical results indicate that Taiwan and Korea’s ICT export to the world shrink by 47.8 and 40.9 percent when the trades are measured in value-added terms. Taiwan and Korea’s ICT export will also decrease by 75.1 and 57.8 percent. From the viewpoint of value added in trade, the share of value added embodied in Taiwan and Korea’s gross ICT exports continued to decrease and reached 24.9 and 42.2 percent in 2011, while the components of pure double counted terms kept growing in recent years.

With global value chains flourishing in recent years, conventional trade statistics not only fails to highlight the vertical specialization among different countries, but also distorts the measurement of a country’s competitiveness. This paper extricates value-added exports in ICT industry earned by Taiwan and Korea and bring into focus the importance of trade in value added.

Delineating where stability occurs in a contract provides the window of opportunity for procurement officials to positively affect cost and schedule outcomes. While the concept of a Cost Performance Index (CPI) "stability rule" has been routinely cited by Earned Value Management (EVM) authors since the early 1990's, more recent research questions the veracity of this stability rule. This paper resolves the controversy by demonstrating that the definition of stability matters. We find a morphing of the stability definition over time, with three separate definitions permeating the literature. Next, an analysis of Department of Defense contracts for both cost and schedule stability properties finds that the veracity of the stability rule is intricately tied to the definition used.

The purpose of the paper is to outline a method for reporting project performance that can be used to provide incentives to both clients and contractors to share risks and opportunities.

The conceptual foundation of the paper is two‐fold: firstly, a review of the literature highlights the limitations of fixed price, fixed unit price and variable (fee for service) type contracts and hence the need for contracts that incentivise project clients and contractors to act in mutually beneficial ways; secondly, the earned‐value method (EVM) is discussed as a means of reporting project progress via a single value‐based metric that is applicable to both client and contractor. The integrating of these two elements provides the basis for the method for reporting project performance described in this paper.

The paper presents the co‐operative incentivised negotiation budget (COIN). The COIN budget uses the concept of the variable (fee for service) type contract. In addition, it utilises the EVM to report project progress in a simple, easy‐to‐understand manner that enables both parties to share in the beneficial outcomes of better than planned performance and to share in the negative results of under‐performance.

This paper is conceptual and, although reporting elements of best practice, further research is needed in the following areas: firstly, the benefits, costs and limitations of, and the barriers to, using EVM‐based approaches in projects in general, and facilities projects in particular; secondly, the effectiveness of incentivising contracts in terms of addressing issues that lead to poor performance, such as poor communication and lack of trust between the parties.

The COIN budget is a means by which the client and contractor can easily monitor performance in terms of the value earned in providing the agreed project deliverables. Whilst enabling the contractor to earn a cost plus margin, it enables both parties to have a common goal through the sharing of the positive and negative consequences associated with project opportunities and risks.

The paper makes an original contribution by integrating elements of best practice in the areas of contract selection and monitoring of project performance.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrated earned value management (EVM) approach to control quality, cost, schedule and risk of projects.

This study represents a new EVM framework by considering a quality control index. Particularly, some control indices and cumulative buffers are defined by two proposed, methods, namely the linear- and Taguchi-based methods. These methods are implemented in three different projects in different industries.

According to the results, integration of the quality index creates a better control situation by providing more accurate information. Hence, project managers could comprehensively monitor the status of important factors to make more precise decisions while maintaining the simplicity of their analysis.

From the methodological and theoretical features, this paper offers new visions because, to the best of authors’ knowledge, no comparable study has been conducted before.

The concept of “earned value” can be very useful in controlling large, expensive projects. It offers a consistent view across time and across a number of projects. It can be complex to use, but it offers sophisticated progress monitoring. Outlines the basic concepts and shows how earned value is used to measure, monitor and control large and complex projects.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the stability of the cost performance index (CPI) for environmental remediation projects as the topic is not addressed in the literature. CPI is defined as the earned value of work performed divided by the actual cost of the work, and CPI stability represents the point in time in a project after which the CPI varies by less than 20 percent (measured in different ways).

After collecting monthly earned value management (EVM) data for 136 environmental remediation projects from a United States federal agency in fiscal years 2012 and 2013, the authors used the nonparametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test to analyze CPI stability. The authors also used nonparametric statistical comparisons to identify any significant relationships between CPI stability and independent variables representing project and contract characteristics.

The CPI for environmental projects did not stabilize until the projects were 41 percent complete with respect to project duration. The most significant factors contributing to CPI stability were categorized into the following managerial insights: contractor qualifications, communication, stakeholder engagement, contracting strategy, competition, EVM factors, and macro project factors.

As CPI stability for environmental remediation projects has not been reported in the literature, this research provides new insights to help project managers understand when the CPIs of environmental remediation projects stabilize and which factors have the most impact on CPI stability.