Topic Teasers Vol. 114: Making Budgets Work

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  Cost Management   Estimating  

My team is experienced and motivated, and while we come in around the budget I have constructed, management is constantly saying it doesn’t make any money on my projects. I am figuring in salaries and costs for raw materials at a constant rate. I always show that people work the number of hours I have projected. The company executives seem to be pleased with the work of other project managers, even if they show much higher costs than I do. Where am I going wrong?

A. With agile becoming the darling of the project management industry, it is unnecessary to figure more than a collective dollar hourly average for your team. Multiply that by 40 hours a week for the duration of the release period, and you have as much cost information as can be calculated.

B. The latest HIPAA regulations say that employee salary data is protected information. Therefore, it can no longer be shared with a team lead, a ScrumMaster, a project manager or a program manager. In order to get accurate cost figures, ask each employee working on your project to voluntarily tell you their hourly rate.

C. There are many other cost factors than salaries and materials to be managed in any project. Knowing what to include and what to update as the project progresses …

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