Project Budget Management

Profitability is one essential measure for businesses, and in a project oriented business Managing project budgets is a key activity. This course will equip project managers with the necessary skills to enable then to manage life cycle costs of a project from budget preparation through to cost tracking, reporting and taking corrective actions.

Course Content

The Need to Manage Project Costs
- Why manage project costs
- Successes and disasters
- Examining profitability
- Cash flow is king

A Framework for Managing Costs
- What is a project
- The project cost life cycle

Developing a Structured Plan
- The pre-requisite for effective project cost management
- WBS, RACI, Cost Account, CPM, Gantt charts, Risk and Resource Analysis.
- Rolling wave planning

The Project Justification
- Business decision, lining up with the business objectives
- Project evaluation and sensitivity assessment
- Financial analysis techniques. ROI, Payback, NPV, IRR
- The project approval process

Building up the Budget
- A structured approach to estimating
- Estimating techniques
- Adding contingencies
- The risk budget
- Human factors

Setting up a Project Cost Measuring System
- So you think you can read progress reports!
- What is earned value & C/SCSC
- Earned value, the performance measure
- Measuring and reporting project performance
- Variance analysis
- Forecasting outcomes
- Yes you can read progress reports!
- Simplifying the process
- Applying the technique in MS Project, its strengths and weaknesses

Decision Time
- Clear communications and reporting
- Taking corrective actions
- Keeping the business financial objectives in mind
- Strategic decisions