Controlling schedule and budget
Both schedule and cost are tightly integrated, so your costs become a time-phased baseline that is working with your schedule to pay for executed work. While it would be nice to think all things went the way of the baselines, it's probably better to assume they won't. Since you are responsible for reporting on the performance, it's important to know ways to do that effectively. This means that we will cover both schedule and cost performance together using a handy technique called the earned value technique. A word of warning: if you are mathematically challenged (I just pointed to myself), then this section may seem a bit overwhelming to you. If you like, you can blame the United States Department of Defense (DoD), who created this technique, for losing the next hour of your life, because I certainly will! I'm just kidding (no, I'm not). Let's get to it and through it together.
