Pinnacle Insights

During the NDIA Integrated Program Management Division (IPMD) Winter Meeting in Melbourne, FL, Randy Steeno of NDIA discussed the updates contained in the EIA-748, Revision D, which was published by SAE on January 8th, 2019.

This article is part of a series on the roles and responsibilities involved in performing Integrated Program Management. Other articles included in this series are:

• Master Scheduler Roles & Responsibilities
• Earned Value (EV) Analyst Roles & Responsibilities

The Control Account Manager, or CAM, plays a critical role in an Earned Value Management System (EVMS). 

Oracle's Primavera Unifier is a cost control, capital planning, and project phase delivery tool. Oracle Construction and Engineering has now enhanced their already great Unifier tool with added Earned Value Management (EVM) capabilities. 

As most of you probably are aware, Deltek MPM, currently in the Maintenance Support phase will be moving into Sustaining Support as of December 31, 2018. There will be no further updates or fixes to the software offered by Deltek after that. The state of MPM that it is currently in, will remain.

If you are in the market for a cost management tool your short list likely includes Deltek Cobra.  Cobra has a long history of playing a role in both large and small implementations of earned value tools with customers of various sizes.

Recently Pinnacle was offered a sneak peek at the features of the upcoming version 4 upgrade of DCMA Schedule Analyzer forProject™ which is planned for release this October, 2017.

DCMA Schedule Analyzer forProject™ has long offered a simple yet powerful way to assess the health of the schedule based on the DCMA 14-Point Assessment methodology as an add-in to Microsoft Project.  The new version adds significant new capabilities for schedule analysis.

Often these two terms are used interchangeably, but they mean very different things to those of us who have been implementing project management and project controls systems.  

In Part 2 of this series, Schedule Analysis, Part 2: Why Should I Do It?, it was stated that schedule analysis increases confidence in the schedule and its results. It provides information as to where the schedule needs to be improved and how it needs to be improved.