Both planned value and actual costs matter during this phase because, unlike the other phases, the monitoring and controlling phase takes place for the duration of the entire project. It’s important for actual costs to be kept as minimal as possible for this phase since there is potential for costs to rise during a longer phase rather than a short one. Ideally, you want to maximize your output with as little input as possible so planned value is something that should be exceeded, which means that you are exceeding expectations. It’s important to note that both planned value and actual costs matter in all phases because there is always a cost and expectations for each phase of the project. As previously mentioned, both are particularly important in this phase because it is the longest phase so the longer something is, the ore likely that there will be added cost during it.