The actual process of developing a project budget is straightforward. The general challenges lie more with omissions and the foundation on which the budget is based. In this section, we review the details of the development budget and finalize the budget steps depicted in the general project planning process flow in Figure 9.1. Sources of Project… Continue reading Creating a Project Budget
Month: June 2023
Principles of an Effective Budget
Before we get into the details of building a project budget, let’s review the fundamental principles that guide this process:
The Impact of the Project Budget
Even if you find yourself in an environment where it is not expected that you develop a project budget (instead you are asked to primarily manage schedule and scope), I strongly encourage you to do two things: The project budget estimates all the costs the project will incur, and when they will be incurred. It… Continue reading The Impact of the Project Budget
Introduction
It’s one of the key success factors for projects—completing the project within budget. Yet, for many project managers, especially those managing internal projects, it’s the success factor they have the least awareness about. There are several reasons why this occurs, and it does vary by industry, but most of the reasons have to do with… Continue reading Introduction
Building the Preliminary Schedule
Now that we have our key inputs (WBS, task relationships, effort estimates, and resource assignments), we are ready to build our initial schedule. There are a few keys to remember here: Value of Scheduling Software If you are not an advocate of scheduling software, or you need to help convince someone else in your organization,… Continue reading Building the Preliminary Schedule
Determining Task Relationships (Sequencing the Work)
In this step, we think about what needs to be done first and what can be done at the same time. We want to capture the logical relationships that exist between the tasks in our WBS. The traditional technique used to capture these relationships is the network diagram. An example of a network diagram is… Continue reading Determining Task Relationships (Sequencing the Work)
Creating a Schedule
Because we are on this wavelength, let’s go ahead and review the key steps involved in building a project schedule. The steps are also summarized in Figure 8.4. We will follow up this section with a more in-depth look at a few of these: Let’s take a closer look at a few of the key steps.… Continue reading Creating a Schedule
Key Inputs for Building a Schedule
The first step in building a schedule is to review the key inputs. Let’s make sure we are clear on these and where we are in the overall schedule development and planning process. To build a project schedule, you need five key inputs: Due to the amount of important information and the critical nature of… Continue reading Key Inputs for Building a Schedule
The Goal of the Schedule Development Process
I’ve used terms such as “realistic” and “well-developed” to describe the type of project schedule we want to develop. Before we continue, let’s clarify what the goal of the schedule development process should be. The schedule development process should generate a project schedule that meets the following criteria: After reviewing this list, you probably see… Continue reading The Goal of the Schedule Development Process
The Impact of the Project Schedule
The project schedule is the tool that merges all the work tasks to be performed, their relationships, their estimated durations, and their assigned resources to a calendar. Examples of partial schedules are illustrated in Figures 8.1 and 8.2. For most, specialized scheduling software (such as Microsoft [MS] Project) is used to produce a project schedule. For those managers… Continue reading The Impact of the Project Schedule