If CEO’s Knew What the Government Knows About Protecting the Top Line

Anton MItchell, President, Quviant

If CEO’s Knew What the Government Knows About Protecting the Top Line

Based on my experience working with hundreds of teams compelled to use EVMS to bid large scale defense contracts, I’ve become a fan. EVMS or Earned Value Management System is the most comprehensive trend analysis technique available for managing programs and projects. By using trend data, EVM, aka performance measures are proven to successfully forecast cost or schedule overruns in the early stages of an endeavor. Whether by government contractual requirement or by preference, these tools provide invaluable benefits for understanding how programs or projects are progressing in relation to the original funding or product scope. With performance measures tailored down from the government’s bulky 32 checkpoints, private sector CEO’s stand to gain specific cost, schedule, risk, and deployment insights without analysis paralysis. I’ll leave you with the following testimonials in support of protecting the top line.

  • With the right information communicated – better decisions can be made.
  • Keeping bad or high risk news to yourself or leaving information out will only make matters worse.
  • Having the best information as early as possible, allows for the development of an alternative.
  • Given time, a risk migration plan can be put in place, and the project and profitability rescued.

Take a page out of the government’s book and secure your profitability!

Call it EVMS, EVMS-Lite, Performance Measurements or Performance Management - it’s about capturing, understanding and properly communicating, with a common language, the information about the development or progress of a project or product. Considering that potentially hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars are at stake, including the creation of or the loss of people’s jobs [yours, your vendors, your customers] and the future of a company itself - would it not be wiser to act than react?