How to Create a Balanced Budget‪?‬

Every Project Manager faces the same predicament when it comes to developing a project budget. A project produces either a product or a service. If you are working in an information technology department providing IT support and services to your internal organizations, chances are you will be involved in projects for your internal customers. The project budget is the responsibility of the department that has requested your services. If you are working for a company to manage a project that involves the delivery of a specific product to your customers, then you need to ensure that your company makes the budgeted profits from the delivery of the product or services. The bottom line is, you need to focus on controlling the cost of the project. Controlling cost is quite a challenge but it would have been easier should you have developed a realistic and balanced budget right from the day you initiated the project.

A Project Manager's past experiences in dealing with a number of similar projects will use the historical information he/she has collected to create an accurate and realistic budget. However, you will be surprised to learn that most of the project managers are not aware of the project cost drivers behind a balanced budget although they claim that they possess years of project experience.

As a Project Manager, in your effort to develop a balanced budget, you will encounter several challenges that will make this process not as smooth as you expected it would be. There are a number of constraints that need to be taken into consideration, one of them is the duration to complete the project. Obviously, any extension to the original implementation schedule will result in an increase in cost. The other constraint that has always been a problem for all Project Managers is the scope of the project. Any deviation from the agreed scope of work will affect the project schedule, and more resources will be required to execute the additional work which translates to additional costs. Project constraints related to scope and schedule changes are just the tip of the iceberg, there are many other factors that will have a direct influence on the development of the project budget. Without knowing all these constraints, how will you create a balanced budget that has zero budget deficit and potentially has a budget surplus or profits? Discover the techniques in this book to learn more!