Planned Value (PV / BCWS)
Planned Value, often written as PV and once called BCWS (Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled), answers a scheduling question in money terms: "According to my plan, how much work should be done by right now, and what was that work supposed to cost?" It's the value of the work you scheduled to have completed by today. The older name BCWS spells it out nicely — the Budgeted Cost of the Work that was Scheduled.
To find it, you take your planned percent complete — meaning how far along your original schedule said you should be by this date — and multiply it by the BAC, the total approved budget for the whole project. The result is a dollar figure representing the worth of the work you promised to deliver by now.
Reading it is straightforward: a higher PV means your plan expected a lot of work (and cost) to be behind you by this point, while a lower PV means the plan called for only a little progress so far. PV by itself is your "baseline expectation" — a reference line. Project managers use it as the yardstick they compare real results against; without knowing what you PLANNED to accomplish, you can't judge whether you're ahead of or behind schedule.
Think of it like a training plan for a marathon. Your plan says that by week 4 you should be able to run 10 miles. That '10 miles by week 4' is your Planned Value — the benchmark you'll measure your real running against.
Suppose your total project budget (BAC) is $200,000 and the schedule spans 10 months, with work planned to progress evenly. By the end of month 4, your plan says you should be 40% complete. Planned Value = 40% × $200,000 = 0.40 × $200,000 = $80,000. This means that, according to your original plan, $80,000 worth of work should be finished by the end of month 4. You'll later compare this figure to the value of the work actually done to see if you're on schedule.
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