Change is inevitable in software projects and software engineers strive to find ways to manage changes. A complete task could be easily in a team`s agenda sometime later due to change demands. Change demands are caused by failures and/or improvements and require additional effort which in most cases have not been planned upfront and affect project progress significantly. Earned Value Management (EVM) is a powerful performance management and feedback tool for project management. EVM depicts the project progress in terms of scope, cost, and schedule and provides future predictions based on trends and patterns of the past. Even though EVM works quite well and widely used in disciplines like construction and mining, it is not the case for software discipline. Software projects require special attention and adoption for change. In this study, we present a model to measure change and subsequent rework and evolution costs to monitor software projects accurately. We have performed five case studies in five different companies to explore the usability of the proposed model. This paper depicts the proposed model and discusses the results of the case studies.

Introduction

Project management aims to deliver projects on time, with the agreed scope and quality according to specified requirements and within the planned budget. The achievement of project management is perceived as planning the project accurately at the beginning and then executing the project according to this plan. Execution of the projects requires monitoring progress. EVM is commonly used performance management tool to measure project progress objectively in terms of scope, cost and schedule. It basically compares the planned work and accomplished work in a project and calculates the value of this accomplished work. EVM is called as “Management with the lights on” [۱] since it clearly identifies where the project is at a specific time and where it is going based on the trends. EVM is widely used in numerous industries such as construction and mining. Though, it is still little known and utilized in the software industry. The tools, techniques, and methods used in the traditional project management have been applied to software projects for years. However, in the field of software engineering, there is an inevitable factor of change that makes the majority of tools, methods, and techniques unusable as they are. The earlier approach in the industry was to minimize changes by making better analysis, better plans and preventing changes. The products as well as processes have been the target for stabilization without producing desired effects [2–۵] but it was never enough to prevent or avoid change [6–۸]. Research studies show that software specialists spend about 30%–۵۰% of their time on rework rather than on work done right in the first time [7,9].