Final answer:
ACWP, or Actual Cost of Work Performed, is a term from Earned Value Analysis in project management that represents the actual expenditure on the work completed by a certain date, which is crucial for budget control and calculation of other metrics.
Step-by-step explanation:
Earned Value Analysis (EVA) is a project management technique used for measuring project performance and progress in an objective manner. The term ACWP stands for Actual Cost of Work Performed. It is a critical component in the EVA methodology, providing project managers with information on the amount of funds that have been actually spent on the work completed to that point in the project.
Understanding ACWP is essential for maintaining project budget controls and for deriving other important EVA metrics such as Cost Variance (CV) and Cost Performance Index (CPI). ACWP is compared with the Budgeted Cost of Work Performed (BCWP) to get the CV, and with the Budgeted Cost of Work Scheduled (BCWS) to calculate the CPI, which indicates whether the project is on budget and progressing as planned.