Project Management: Schedules and Budgets

Course Overview

Project managers must balance scant resources, tight budgets and strict deadlines all in the face of ever-increasing customer expectations. This course provides the core scheduling and budgeting skills required to deliver critical projects on time and within budget. By performing tasks manually and with spreadsheets, rather than relying on project management software, you learn vital techniques for future project success.

Audience

• Project managers, those following the PMBOK(R) Guide, and others who wish to enhance their scheduling and budgeting skills.
• Project management knowledge at the level of Course 296, "Project Management: Skills for Success", or Course 340, "Project Management for Software Development", is strongly recommended.

Skills Gained

You Will Learn How To

• Construct realistic schedules and budgets to achieve cost-effective and timely project delivery
• Facilitate strong team estimates which factor in uncertainty
• Calculate Critical Path from well-defined network diagrams
• Allocate accurate and realistic costs and chart expected cash flow
• Assign resources effectively and respond to end-date changes
• Perform Earned Value Analysis (EVA) to keep the project on track

Course Outline

Introduction

• Estimating and completing a project
• Comparing estimates to actuals
• Defining project success criteria

Best Practices for Project Planning

Building the foundation

• Developing a WBS
• Adopting a product-oriented focus
• Identifying the appropriate level of detail

Diagramming network relationships

• Applying network diagrams: AOA, AON
• Reviewing CPM and PERT
• Defining precedence relationships
• Establishing dependencies
• Determining lead and lag times
• Constructing PDM diagrams

Developing Realistic Estimates

Choosing the right estimating model

• Engaging subject-matter experts: the Delphi technique
• Preparing analogous estimates
• Applying parametric techniques to estimates
• Contrasting bottom-up and top-down methods
• Determining a Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) estimate

Dealing with uncertainty

• Formulating three-point estimates
• Factoring in contingency

Integrating the Schedule and Critical Path

Computing the Critical Path

• Adding task durations to determine path lengths
• Calculating activity Start and End dates
• Determining the critical path
• Identifying near-critical paths

Creating Gantt charts

• Building Gantt charts following industry standards
• Representing the relative durations of activities graphically

Fine-tuning your plan

• Calculating and using float
• Planning delivery by applying earliest start times

Building a Budget

Categorising project costs

• Identifying direct and indirect cost elements
• Itemising capital expenses
• Costing based on WBS tasks
• Aggregating project costs

Modelling costs

• Calculating total project costs
• Adding costs to the schedule
• Scheduling cash accruals
• Building the project cash flow
• Analysing contingency reserves

Realistic Resourcing

Schedules that make sense

• Factoring in productivity
• Allocating resources effectively: resource aggregation, levelling and smoothing
• Addressing resource constraints: rescheduling and resourcing strategies

Responding to delivery-date changes

• Fast-tracking the project plan
• Crashing the Critical Path

Measuring and Improving Performance

Monitoring your plan

• Recording actual durations
• Tracking cash flow
• Assessing and summarising project status

Performing EVA

• Calculating schedule and budget efficiency
• Quantifying cost and schedule variance
• Projecting impact on project outcomes
• Mapping EVA to cost accounting
• Reconciling and addressing project issues

Communicating with Stakeholders

• Incorporating inbound information into outbound reports
• Applying the right level of precision

Project Management: Schedules and Budgets / 248