Everyday Project Management

8

Keeping Your Eye on the Budget

In this chapter, you learn effective approaches to budgeting, how to combine top-down and bottom-up budgeting techniques, how optimism stands in the way of controlling expenses, and the importance of building in some slack.

Money Still Doesn’t Grow on Trees

As project manager, a key responsibility of yours is to keep close reins on the budget. Your organization or whoever is funding the project enjoys hearing about cost overruns about as much as having a root canal.

Often the monetary resources allocated to a project (perhaps before you stepped aboard) have been underestimated. Why? Possibly as a result of exuberance the authorizing party or stakeholder might have had as to what can be achieved at what cost. This ...