Contemporary issues: earned value management: uses and misuses: the earned value concept was developed to correct serious distortions in assessing a project's cost performance generated by comparing actual costs with a time-phased budget.

This edition's Contemporary Logistics feature was written by Dr Stephen Hays Russell. Over the years, Dr Russell has been a frequent contributor to the Journal. He is an accomplished logistician and is on the faculty of the John B. Goddard School of Business and Economics, Weber State University. In "Earned Value Management: Uses and Misuses," Dr Russell examines the relevance of Earned Value Management (EVM) to the logistics community. He makes the case that its relevance is threefold. First, today's logisticians are intimately involved in the weapon system acquisition process. Because EVM is such an integral part of the imposed acquisition management architecture, logisticians need to understand the tool. Otherwise, they become tangential to the management and performance reviews of an acquisition program. Second, EVM is increasingly being addressed in the literature of performance based logistics and acquisition logistics. Third, EVM as a leading-edge management tool has not seen the application to logistics-specific projects that it merits.

He concludes with the following points:

* A basic ...