Develop The Project Budget—determine Budget

By Author: Kimberly Bloch
Total Articles: 24
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COST BUDGETING involves aggregating estimated costs of individual schedule activities or work packages to establish cost estimates and a total cost baseline. The baseline is used to measure project performance.

BUDGETING INPUTS include formal periodic limitations of project fund expenditures, which are contained in project charters or contracts. These constraints are part of the SUMMARY BUDGET, which is provided by the project scope statement. A PMP prep course will include examples of this.

THE PROJECT SCOPE STATEMENT provides the summary budget, which includes funding constraints due to pending funding authorization by the buyer's organization or other entities such as government agencies.

MANAGEMENT CONTINGENCY RESERVES are budget items which are not included in the project cost baseline, but are included in the budget for unplanned changes to the project scope and cost. PMP exam prep will review this and associated templates.

TOOLS & TECHNIQUES USED IN COST BUDGETING:

PARAMETRIC MODELS are mathematical models used to predict total project costs. They are simple and the most reliable ...
... when the model is scalable, accurate historical information is used to develop the model, and model parameters are quantifiable.

FUNDING LIMIT RECONCILIATION necessitates date constraints be imposed for some work packages. Significant variations in periodic funds expenditures are unacceptable. Expenditures are reconciled with funding limits. This may necessitate work be rescheduled or adjusted to regulate or regain control of expenditures. Date constraints for some work packages may be required to accomplish this.

In this task, the project manager develops a project schedule using the project timeline, scope, and resource plan.

The objective of this task is to manage timely completion of the project.

The Time Management activity definition process identifies the specific schedule activities which must be performed to produce various project deliverables.

The activity definition process identifies the deliverables at the lowest level of the WBS (the work package).

Output from previously performed project integration and planning processes is used to define the schedule activities.

The project manager utilizes the following to define the schedule activities:

the scope baseline
organizational process assets
enterprise environmental factors

Internal organizational process assets and enterprise environmental factors used to define the schedule activities
include:

organizational policies
the historical information project calendar
resource availability

Defining schedule activities involves:

identifying the planned work
documenting the planned work

The activity definition process implicitly defines and plans the work so project objectives will be met. Scheduling activities provide a basis for:
scheduling
estimating
monitoring
controlling

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