It is important to note that Earned Value (EV) is dependent on the percent completion of the project and not necessarily the specific date that the cost is being evaluated. That is, when looking at Cost Variance (SV), if you are spending heavily early on, it can be that 25 percent of the project is completed in the first week while the rest of the project is completed over the span of 10 weeks. Therefore, the EV would be greater in that first week as a percentage of the original budget and can still be accurately measured against the actual costs. As spending goes down, the percent of the project’s completion is not increase as rapidly, meeting the slower spending observed in the actual costs.

Any skewed costs over time hold no bearing when considering the Scheduled Variance (SV). SV, similar to EV, both consider only the percent of the project completed. SV is dependent on the EV and Planned Valued (PV), which are evaluated by the actual and predicted percentage of completion, respectively. In this sense, if more is spent early in the project than predicted, and you believe that increased costs doesn’t increase the progress of the project, the costs wouldn’t affect EV. It will evaluate out to however far the project progressed and compare it to how far it was expected to progressed by that specific date.