Earned Value (EV)
Earned Value (EV) is the budgeted cost of the work actually completed to date - progress expressed in the currency of the original budget, not in hours spent. Also called the Budgeted Cost of Work Performed (BCWP).
Earned Value prices completed work at what the budget said it was worth, not at what it actually cost. For each activity, EV = budget x actual % complete: finish 60% of an activity budgeted at 500 hours and you have earned 300 hours, whether the crew booked 250 or 400 against it.
That separation is the whole trick of EVM. Comparing EV to Planned Value isolates schedule performance (SV, SPI); comparing the same EV to Actual Cost isolates cost performance (CV, CPI). Without EV, hours spent and progress made blur into a single number that can hide an overrun behind a busy site.
EV is only as honest as the percent-complete behind it, which is why mature systems earn progress from measured quantities installed against each work package rather than estimates made from memory. In WBSync, EV accumulates per L4 activity from quantity-based progress and rolls up the WBS, capped at each activity's budget so claimed progress can never earn more than the work was worth.
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