27.1 THE IMPORTANCE OF EARNED VALUE You have just been assigned as Project Manager to a project that is already in progress. Your prede- cessor has apparently managed this project successfully and is being rewarded with a larger project assignment. She tells you that the project is underrunning, and provides a status report, that provides the following information: Planned Expenditures to Date: $28,500,000 Actual Expenditures to Date: $22,749,000 Approved Budget: $57,000,000 She states that the project is about half done and many of the problems from the early stages of the project are now resolved. You are a little uneasy because this particular project manager has had a string of successful projects that later end in disaster, after she has moved on to other work. She freely admits that she is far better in the early stages of a project than in the later stages. "All those details at the completion of a project bore me," she states. You ask how she has determined that the project is half done and she respon