By the end of the year, assuming no change in headcount, we are exactly "on budget."
Congratulations.
Whoop-de-doo.
(How doe's one express sarcasm without being able to use tone of voice, rolled eyeballs, and other non-verbal communication.)
The real cost of doing a project with a set of existing resources is not the budget for those resources but rather the projects that were not done.
The concept of the use it or lose it nature of budgets is at the center of a lot of organizational sub-optimization. It even carries over to the world of projects in the form of task estimates seen as "budgets" of time or effort, that if not used in one instance will be questioned when a similar task appears in a later project. So I better use up my allotted time (even if I do get lucky) so I can get it next time (when I might really need it).
If planners focused as much time on what matters -- the top line and the things necessary to make it bigger -- as they do on budgets and costs and allocations and turf, then a lot of companies would be in a better place. (The same goes for projects -- if a project is worth doing, 9 times out of 10, it's worth subordinating questions of cost to actions to accelerate completion and accrual of benefits -- the reason for the project)
Sorry 'bout that rant.
