Documenting Predictive Project Controls

Predictive projects rely on a known set of artifacts to stay under control: status reports, variance analyses, change logs, and baseline comparisons are the paper trail that lets anyone — not just the person who did the work — see whether the project is still on track. Being able to name which artifact captures which kind of control information (a change log records approved changes and their impact; a status report summarizes current progress against the plan) is tested directly.

Cost variance (CV) and schedule variance (SV) are the two calculations most likely to appear, and they're computed the same simple way every time: CV = Earned Value (EV) − Actual Cost (AC), and SV = Earned Value (EV) − Planned Value (PV). In both cases, positive means ahead/under budget, negative means behind/over budget, and zero means exactly on track — the sign of the number, not its size alone, is what a question is usually testing you on.

Study focus: expect a short numeric scenario (given EV, AC, and PV) asking you to compute CV or SV and interpret what the result means for the project — these are some of the most reliably "right or wrong" questions on the exam, so they reward simply knowing the two formulas cold.