Best Practice 1 - Capturing All Activities
EVM Guideline 1 states that authorized program work elements should be defined. A WBS is usually used to do this. It is a representation of the work scope and breaks down all authorized work into the proper elements. Work is authorized at the control account level through a work authorization process. Work authorization documents define the work to be accomplished and include task outputs, deliverables, an associated budget, and authorizing signatures.
While not explicitly stated in the guidelines, some organizations interpret authorized work as work that has been placed under contract. Some auditing agencies, such as DOD Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA), restrict their assessment of whether a schedule includes all effort to only ensuring that the scope of work that is under contract is included in the contractor’s schedule. They will not assess scope that may be necessary to complete the program but is not under contract.45 In Best Practice 1, we state that the IMS should reflect all effort necessary to successfully complete the program and that it is a comprehensive plan of all government, contractor, subcontractor, and key vendor work. The government program manager is responsible for managing the scope of all project work, not just the scope placed on contract.
However, a contractor project schedule, as a subset of the overall government program effort, will include only contractually authorized work because contractors are obligated to plan activities required by, and limited to, the contract. Thus, when reviewing schedules that support an EVM baseline, only the work that is under contract will be included. In some instances in which the government program manager monitors government effort with EVM, EVM guidelines will apply to all effort used to define the PMB. EVM guidelines are applicable to contracted effort and possibly to government effort as well, depending on the agency and the level of responsibility to which EVM is assigned. The auditor should keep these considerations in mind when assessing the schedule.
DCMA’s schedule assessment process is explained in detail in appendix VII.↩︎