Building and Managing Project Budgets

Length: 2 days
PDUs:  14
PMI Activity ID#: 000433


 

Prerequisites
This course assumes some experience with project work and budgeting, but no specific prior training is required.

Who Should Attend
This course is of immediate value to Business Owners, Project and Program Managers, Portfolio Managers, Budget Analysts, Functional Managers, IT Managers, Product Development Directors, Senior Managers, Acquisition/Procurement Officials, and Business Managers with project responsibility.

The Challenge
The world of projects is rife with cost overruns.  This can be caused by inadequate project planning, poor workmanship, vendor delays and a host of other factors.  The fact is, there are few organizations who can accurately predict the final cost of their projects on a routine basis.  This can cause enormous difficulties.  For example, how can we hope to forecast the ROI of our substantial investment in projects if we cannot estimate with any accuracy the cost side of the equation?  How can we get a handle on this?

The Solution
Building and Managing Project Budgets delivers practical, hands-on training in the development and management of project budgets.  Budgeting is viewed both from the portfolio level, where effective project selection is critical, and the project level where detailed planning is a must.  Attendees are shown how to generate useful preliminary estimates; use a project charter to establish a solid foundation for project budgeting; use Work Breakdown Structure, Risk Analysis and other techniques to drive budget accuracy; employ Earned Value Management as the tool of choice for accurate forecasting; control project cost through effective Change Control; and execute a Transition Plan in order to optimize long term project value.  Through lecture, discussion, exercises and other means attendees construct an effective process that they can use to create and manage reproducibly accurate budgets.  Topics covered during this course include:

• Budget perspective of Project Portfolio Management

• The purpose of  projects – realization of Business Value

• Budget lifecycle

• Four primary functions of the budget

• Seven key attributes of budgets

• Creating useful preliminary estimates of project cost

• Budget objectives of Project Planning

• Budget impact of scope, schedule, procurement and risk

• Creating a detailed project budget

• Funding limit reconciliation

• Setting and managing the project performance baseline

• Tracking cost

• Reporting and Forecasting  with Earned Value Management

• Project Monitoring and Control: Controlling project cost

• Managing budget risks

• Optimizing long-term project value

Instructor Background:
A certified Project Management Professional, the instructor for this course is highly experienced in all aspects of project management.  As a past member of the Board of Directors for the North Carolina Chapter of the Project Management Institute, he has presented numerous workshops and seminars at PMI events, most recently as the keynote speaker at the Palmetto Chapter Symposium in 2010.  He brings that experience with him into the classroom, and uses an endless supply of stories to bring the concepts of project management alive for his students.  Just in the past few years he has trained hundreds of students in both fundamental and advanced project management topics through delivery of courses and workshops.  His unique take on the central importance of Business Value, human factors and implementation of best practice in project management influences his entire curriculum, which takes students far beyond standard Project Management instruction.

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