EV (Earned Value)
Earned Value (EV) is the value of work actually completed by a given date — counted not as money spent or hours worked, but as the planned value of outputs that passed their completion criteria.
How it is computed
Each completed task earns its planned value; sum them up. If 40% of the total value of a $100k project has passed completion judgment by week 5, EV is $40k. Partial credit for in-progress work follows a pre-agreed progress measurement method: 0/100 (nothing until done), weighted milestones (credit per intermediate deliverable), or physical measurement by quantity. Which method matters less than agreeing on it up front: criteria may differ per task, but they must not change after the fact if the EV trend is to be trusted.
Why it matters
EV is the heart of EVM. Both SPI and CPI carry EV in the numerator, so every indicator is only as honest as EV. The shift of perspective is just as valuable: EV asks not "how many hours did we work this week?" but "how much value has passed its completion criteria?" No amount of overtime raises EV without completion. That coldness is where EVM's honesty comes from. It changes the reporting sentence too: say "70% of value has passed its completion criteria" instead of "70% in progress," and what the remaining 30% consists of follows naturally.
Common misconceptions
The first is confusing EV with effort or spend — EV may be denominated in money, but it measures completion, not expenditure. The second is asking assignees "what percent are you at?" with no measurement method behind the question. A gut-called 80% that stays 80% for weeks is the classic eighty-percent-done syndrome. If EV feels untrustworthy, fix the completion criteria before doubting the indicator.
In wbsgantt, EV% rolls up as the weight-weighted sum of leaf progress and is recorded in daily snapshots, forming the actual line of the S-curve.