Resources for PM Budgeting, Scheduling, and More

            Being a project manager can often feel like a daunting task if you focus too much on the entirety of the project. Fortunately, there are an amazing wealth of resources aimed at helping new project managers or experienced project managers looking to update their practices. This week, I did a little hunting around and found a few such resources for your consideration.

            The first is a site called www.brighthubpm.com. Specifically, I took a look at their templates and forms page, found here: http://www.brighthubpm.com/templates-forms/124740-collection-of-free-project-management-templates-and-forms/. I find that forms and templates help me to stay organized and break down large projects into manageable chunks of information, and this site has forms for every step of the project management process. Specifically, it has a link on how to create a RACI or RASCI chart, which Stolovitch mentions in this week’s reference materials. The RASCI (Responsible, Accountable, Support, Consulted, Informed) is a matrix chart that delineates all of the work tasks to be completed on a project, and who is supposed to complete the work and so forth. Each task is assigned to a person or people, and given an estimation as to the duration of hours it will take to compete the task. This can also be used to generate budget considerations, too. Simply generate a cost per hour estimate given the specific people assigned to the tasks, and any and all tools and resources they will need. A word of caution is to remember that what is “needed” should be measured against the approved budget and modified accordingly if necessary. www.brighthubpm.com has a lot of other great templates too, such as when it comes to scheduling and other planning phases…

            One site said that the hardest budget you will ever have to put together is your first one. Budgeting for beginners is difficult because, again there is a lot to consider and some “hidden” or indirect costs can be missed in the budgeting process. This blog post along with this week’s resources, helped me to think of budget as a matter of time as well as money. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/creating-your-project-budget-where-to-begin/ The site’s page also covers common mistakes to avoid in creating the budget. This is helpful because more than half the battle of creating plans, schedules, and budgets are thinking about them in a productive and thorough way. Any resource that helps orient you to a better understanding of the budget is helpful.

            A final resource worth sharing is Cathy Moore’s site. In this blog post, as well as others she talks about how to create value in E-Learning that is also budget-friendly. http://blog.cathy-moore.com/2010/05/how-to-design-elearning-thats-memorable-and-budget-friendly/ Cathy Moore’s blog emphasis on value reminds me that every budgetary consideration should start with the question of value, and how it will increase training effectiveness. By focusing on this emphasis, you begin to realize that you don’t need to develop something you originally thought was essential in the project, or reevaluate the budget plan after assessing the project as a whole. This “meta-budgetary” question can lead to weeding out a great deal of cost-suckers that aren’t really adding value to the training project, and keep the project on-budget.

            What do you find difficult about creating a PM budget? Let me know if you find any of these resources useful in the comments below!