Enter Ongoing Project Information and Monitor Progress

Once you have established a project baseline, you are ready to begin entering ongoing project information and monitoring the progress of your projects. For each project you advance the calendar, roll the wave, enter status information. calculate earned value, enter actual costs, and generate revised forecasts.

Advance the Calendar

Advancing the calendar to the next fiscal period updates the project folder with a new status date and a new “start of current period” date.

Roll the Wave

If you are reporting earned value weekly in a rolling window, you will need to perform the rolling wave operation to expand the monthly data into weekly periods.

Enter Status Information

Status information in Cobra most often refers to estimated and actual dates, although performance can also be measured through a direct estimate of physical completion or the number of units produced. It is possible to enter some or all of this type of information using any of the following methods:

• Direct manual entry
• Automatic entry from a schedule that has already been progressed
• Automatic entry from a suitably prepared transaction file

If you want to update the status of a project using information from a schedule, Cobra lets you transfer actual dates or update estimated dates using either early dates, late dates, or dates calculated by resource scheduling. You can also transfer information related to the physical completion of the planned work.

Calculate Earned Value

Progress techniques are the methods used to calculate earned value. Different methods are appropriate to different work packages, due either to the nature of the work or to the planned duration of the work package. All commonly used progress techniques are supported by Cobra.

The earned value calculations in Cobra examine each work package and interpret the progress technique according to the appropriate indicators of progress. For example, if the progress technique is “0–100” (all value is earned upon completion of the work package), Cobra only needs to look at the actual completion date. If the completion date is set and is prior to the current status date, the work package is complete and 100% of its original budget is earned. On the other hand, if the progress technique is the weighted milestone method, the project must do a more complex calculation based on the achievement of individual milestone dates.

Although Cobra offers a number of methods for calculating earned value, the default calculation generates a value for the cumulative earned value in terms of the first result. In other words, a work package that is budgeted using hours and is 30% complete earns 30% of its budgeted hours. The cumulative earned value in the various derived costs is calculated from the first result, based on the rule that the budgets must be earned at the rates applicable to the original budget.

Finally, earned values for the current period are calculated by subtracting previously recorded earned value for each resource assigned to this work package from its cumulative earned value. A single record is then posted to the project representing the value earned for the work package in the current period. (The date assigned to the current period is the current status date of the project.)

Enter Actual Costs

You cannot enter actual costs prior to entering status information because Cobra normally does not allow actual costs to be assigned to planned control accounts or work packages. (This default can be changed with a project option.) As a result, actual costs are normally entered after the calculation of earned value but before the generation of new project forecasts.

Cobra always stores actual costs as a current period value. If actual costs are entered as a cumulative value, current period values are calculated by subtracting previously recorded actual costs and then posting a current period value.

Cobra lets you enter actual costs:

• Enter actual costs at either the control account or the work package level.
• Enter actual costs as either current period or cumulative-to-date values.
• Enter actual costs using the first result of the resource and have Cobra generate calculated costs, or enter some or all of the derived costs manually.
• Enter actual costs manually or automatically from a transaction file prepared by another system.

Cobra recognizes files in either comma separated value (CSV) or .dbf formats. These files contain either current period or cumulative-to-date values. It is also relatively easy to set up a custom facility for mapping charge account numbers to control accounts or work packages.

Generate Revised Forecasts

Once you have calculated earned value and entered actual costs, you are ready to generate new forecasts for the project based on the updated information.

Cobra's forecasting tools are very flexible, allowing you to calculate at-completion costs (EAC) using either manual or statistical forecasts:

• Manual forecasts are “bottom-up” forecasts in which you update forecasts for work packages or control accounts on an individual basis. You initialize forecasts using baseline budgets at the start of the contract, then update the forecasts of specific work packages or control accounts on an exception basis. Cobra provides two manual forecasting methods:
  • Method M: Manual (retain ETC) — With this method, Cobra deletes the previous period costs and leaves the remaining time-phased ETC unchanged.
  • Method A: Manual (retain EAC) — With this method, Cobra performs the same actions as in Method M but keeps the existing forecast constant by adjusting the ETC.
• Statistical forecasts let you calculate revised ETC and forecast values without manual input. Performance factors (PFs) used in the generation of statistical forecasts can be calculated using Cost Performance Index (CPI) and Schedule Performance Index (SPI) values, or can be derived from user-defined values. It is also possible to use different forecasting techniques depending on how much of the work package is complete.

  These performance factors can be calculated at the level of the entire project, the control account, the work package, or at a specific level in a code file, allowing for more precision in using these forecasts for project management and reporting.

You can opt to maintain multiple forecasts for the project, each forecast based on different assumptions about future performance. You can also set up forecasts that use alternate rate sets for calculating costs under different scenarios.