Spi And Cpi Go Simultaneously

By Author: Pradip Dwevedi
Total Articles: 3
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While doing project management in your organization the main roles of yours must belong to maintaining the schedule and pricing both and that is the main reason why organizations seek the service of an educated and well experienced project manager.

Now-a-days, it is obvious you need to think out of box to get rid of schedule and pricing both. Schedule and cost both are always a big threat for project manager in each project irrespective of the nature and domain both. The project could be from IT industry, or it could be from Banking, telecom, or ITES; schedule and cost must be a threat always for a project manager. Every organization thinks to complete the project in less time and well timely manner. Remember these two terms (‘less time’ and ‘well timely manner’) are very lucrative in hearing and similarly very difficult in doing. But it is a tragedy part that a project manager should follow these very positively.

Smart and certified project managers who have a credential like PMP Certification (to check more visit ...
... site) maintain the schedule and cost both handsomely by applying some techniques based on the best methodologies and if you are not enough to apply those; project is bound to be finish either late or with over budgeted. So, what are those tips or techniques to follow to get rid of schedule and cost overrun?

Checking your SPI:

Got jammed? What is SPI? SPI is nothing but Schedule Performance Index for your project. It is derived by dividing planned value to earned value. While planning you must have decided your planed value for the entire project. You need to visit your planning on the regular basis with your actual performance of the project. To check the deviations on the project you need to revisit this on a routine method. Take an example: Say by the end of Q1, you are checking you project status and got to know that your earned value for that period is more that the planned one. What does it means? It means you are doing well in the perspective of schedule. If you will derive the value of SPI for Q1; it would be more that one as your earned value is greater than planned value and in pessimistic scenario; if the earned value is less than planned value i.e., SPI is less than one; it means you are doing poor in the project in the perspective of schedule. So SPI is a well versed tool to give you an alert over time period to correct your schedule performance.

Checking your CPI:

As SPI is to check the status on schedule, CPI is an asset to check your cost/price status in the project on regular basis. You could wonder, what is CPI? CPI is Cost Performance Index and it is derived by dividing actual cost over earned value in the project. Very similar to SPI, CPI also depends more on earned value. The more earned value, the more CPI and in result the comfortable position of the project and hence the well position of project manager also. If the value of earned value divided by actual cost exceeds one, it means you are doing well in the project in the perspective of cost incurred and if the value is below one, it means you are over-budgeted in the project.

Combining SPI and CPI:

Smart and intelligent project manager always balance the situation in the project by balancing SPI and CPI. Suppose in a project case, the project manager has derived the values of SPI as 0.9 and CPI as 1.2. As a project manager, what you should do? As your SPI is below one by 0.1, it means you are lagging in case of work accomplished – you are behind the schedule. But as your CPI is more by 0.2, you are doing well in the respect of cost. So, what you will be doing? As a project manager you should apply one of the best methodologies. As your cost performance is good you can put more resources to complete the work earlier and on time. In that case gradually your SPI will be improved. In the reverse case if your CPI is 0.9 and SPI is 1.2, you can release resources as your schedule performance is good and doing that your CPI will be improved gradually.

These methodologies you could learn in training seminar like PMP Training. Remember during that training you could learn more on the best methodologies of maintaining the cost performance and schedule performance overwhelmingly.

Author of the article is associated with Whizlabs, the professionals offering certification preparation courses in CCNA, Java, and Project Management.