Earned Value Management and Performance of Youth Funded Projects in Kenya

Project performance remains challenging despite many years of practice and learning. To make a project successful, it is very important for the project to be completed within schedule, completed within budget and the quality is good. To ensure that happens it is important to implement a control system which will be an alert signal to the manager so that corrective measures that are relevant to the project can be implemented. Earned Value management is one of the methods believed to be an effective control tool. The failure of youth funded projects is a problem that has been experienced in Kenya in the past and current and could persist in the future if managerial challenges are not addressed. Empirical evidence suggests that youth funded projects do not generally achieve the required scope, are often late, and perform badly on quality of deliverables as well as on cost budgets. EVM integrates project scope, time and cost through periodic measurements of actual cost and work completion. It views project progress in terms of cost as a function of time against a firm baseline set up at the start of the project. EVM can operate only if the baseline costs and the project plan are fully detailed at project initiation. This study reviews literature on earned value management and on performance of youth funded projects in Kenya. The study aims to recommend the use of EVM to address the performance issues in youth funded projects.