Not totally different, but simpler, which counts. Earned value presupposes things like someone put a value on individual deliverables and that there's a budget

Not totally different, but simpler, which counts. Earned value presupposes things like someone put a value on individual deliverables and that there's a budget that matters. Neither happens much in commercial software in my experience. Since most software cost is headcount * time * cost-per-person, tracking time is a pretty good proxy for that. Of course no metric matters if you produce bad code and call it progress.