Repaying a Lifetime of Earned Value

The Project Management Institute (PMI) describes the purpose of Earned Value as follows: “To report the accomplishments of the project, … EV is the quantification of the “worth” of the work done to date. In other words, EV tells you, in physical terms, what the project has accomplished.’1

 

My parent's life work, their “project”, was raising their family. There can be no doubt that my parents used their resources to get this project successfully completed to the best of their ability. They have Earned the Value of the family they created and all that my siblings and I have accomplished. 

 

My earliest childhood memories can only be described as idyllic. My sisters and I grew up in the suburbs just a few blocks from Huntington Village, NY. On our street, several families had kids who were our same ages so there were tons of kids to play with. In watching shows like “Our Gang”, we saw ourselves, we lived that life! On days we didn’t have school, we played outside and knew to be home when the streetlights came on. We played massive games of kickball with the neighborhood kids, we biked EVERYWHERE, we sledded in the neighbor's backyard, we put on plays (and forced our parents to be the audience). My childhood was something out of a fairytale and my parents were, from my POV, the absolute best. 

Family is everything to my parents and they made sure we never wanted for anything. Though we were never wealthy, our parents sent all four of us to private school. Each summer, they somehow figured out how to afford a family vacation which most years was a trip to Sebago Lake in Maine. Oh how we loved those trips!  Mom’s homemade fried chicken, PB&J’s and a gallon of milk straight out of the cooler never tasted so good!  

Everything our parents did, they did for us, their children, and for the six of us as a family. We never had a lot and we wore a lot of “hand-me-downs” but we never doubted that we were loved. We still laugh about the car the four of us kids shared when we were in high school and college. It was a beat-up brown station wagon pseudo-affectionately called “ The SLUG”.  Through all my parent's financial struggles, my perception of my folks was always one of goodness, wholeness, and unconditional Love. They likely cried themselves to sleep many nights over not having enough. I’m sure there were, of course, struggles, battles, and yelling but I do not recall any of that. When thinking about my early childhood, I remember Camelot! 

Last year, when it became apparent to us that our folks could no longer handle their own personal and financial affairs, my sisters and I took the reins and managed our way through getting our parents into a better position for the future. We have had many people who know us ask what it all took to make that happen.  They mention how much time and work it must have taken but we don’t see it as work… we see it as paying our Parents back the Earned Value of their life’s work.

1 Reichel, C. W. (2006). Earned value management systems (EVMS): "you too can do earned value management" Paper presented at PMI® Global Congress 2006—North America, Seattle, WA. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.