Project cost and timing

The Budget and Schedule Worksheet captures the project timing and estimated cost by phase and total. With the Resource Management option the Budget & Schedule worksheet includes a section for capturing high level resource requirements (by skill set). The worksheet automatically calculates human resource cost by phase using standard resource costs entered in the central resource pool. Other non-capital and capital costs can be added for a complete cost profile for the project.

In this example "S" represents the start of the project; the subsequent gates are numbered sequentially from 1 to 6 in this case. The Project File can handle up to seven phases and eight gates or major milestones. The phase names are indicated: "Investigation", "Feasibility" etc. The phase-gate terminology can be adjusted based on the type of project being managed.

Resources can be assigned to the project by skill set on this worksheet if the Resource Management option is purchased. Only resource types that have been entered into the central resource pool can be assigned to the project. The resource pool captures standard resource cost which is used to calculate the cost contribution to the project based on the headcount numbers entered (the example above shows a software engineer headcount of 2 for the 48 week development phase. This represents 96 person-weeks of effort and is costed accordingly).

When the project is first created, preliminary timing estimates provide the basis for the gate dates and phase durations. Similar preliminary estimates are made for resources and project costs. These estimates are refined and updated as the project proceeds through it's early phases. Once the "baseline gate" is passed the project team is committed to the targets established for the project and their performance is measured against those targets.