The Cost Simulator is tool that allows you to experiment with various scenarios by letting you play with some of the project's parameters and see in real time what the impact might be on costs. It is accessible from Costs > Forecast, in the information panel located on the right-hand side of the screen. The Cost Simulator lets you play with:

The target end date of the project,
The target Earned Value

It then provides you rough estimates on:

The final cost of the project,
The effort that would need to be deployed in man-days,
The ideal team size required.

Simulations are performed based on known information, such as:

the salary costs to date of a single earned value unit,
the fixed, known future costs,
the average wage of the current team.

Performing a Simulation

To perform a simulation, first specify a target end date and a targeted Earned Value (in terms of Earned Value Field units). Then hit the Simulate button to execute the simulation and get the results. The simulation results are shown in a box that appears underneath the Simulator and directly on the chart as a black line. Results can be removed by clicking the Clear button in the results panel. The following shows an example simulation and its results.

Cost Simulator fields

Inline help. Click to get more information about the Cost Simulator.

Target End Date

Targeted end date.

Must be greater or equals to the date of the simulation.

∑ "Earned Value units" (EV)

Targeted total of earned values units at the targeted end date.

Must be greater than the completed earned values units

Simulation results fields

Final Cost	Estimated final cost at the targeted earned values at the targeted end date.
Effort to complete	Estimated total man-days to complete the targeted earned values at the targeted end date.
Team size	Estimated team size needed to complete the targeted earned values at the targeted end date.

Simulation results calculation

When launching the simulation, the following calculations are performed:

Simulation results may differ from the projections based on the performance indexes. This is due to the fact that the Cost Simulator is making a distinction between the salary costs and other costs, by contrast to the EVM performance indices.

Final Cost

Final Cost = EVSC * Targeted Earned Values + All known non-salary costs at the Targeted date

Where EVSC is the Salary Cost of a single Earned Value unit to date. It is computed by taking the sum of all salary costs to date divided by the completed Earned value units to date.

Effort to complete

Effort to complete = SCr / current average team wage / Hours per working days

Where SCr is the Remaining Salary Cost from the current date to the targeted date. It is computed by multiplying the EVSC (see Final Cost calculation) by the difference between the targeted Earned Value units and the completed Earned Value units to date.

Team Size

Team size = Effort to complete / Sum of working days between the current date and the targeted date.

Related pages:

Folio Forecast