Questions tagged [budget]
An estimate of income and expenditure planned for a project.
4
votes
4answers
156 views
What can I do when I can't adjust scope, resources, or schedule and a team member wants a raise?
After almost 20y programming and 5y managing I have arrived at a state to be so confused with the basics that I need help from outside!
At the project management we have 3 pillars:
Scope: features ...
1
vote
2answers
34 views
Project budgeting by financial year vs lifetime?
We're discussing how project budgets will be set and tracked. My view is that the budget should be set for the duration and tracked that way. Our finance team have a preference for the budget to be ...
0
votes
2answers
72 views
How to negotiate a software proposal?
My company (western Europe) needs to outsource a project, and I received an offer from a eastern Europe software company.
The proposal consists of a main part and an optional part.
The work is ...
2
votes
2answers
63 views
CPI value at project closure
What should the CPI be after a project was closed (the project was not canceled)?
Must the CPI always move to 1 at project closure or could it remain at the last indicated value (example 0.85) before ...
-1
votes
1answer
55 views
Time-budget tracking monitoring for PM and client
As a PM I constantly struggle to shuffle information about used-up and remaining time budgets between customer and development team.
After receiving a job from the customer, and after detailing it ...
1
vote
2answers
328 views
What is 'overhead' in a research project budget?
I am a new to project management, and I have started working on a European project proposal.
I can't figure out what "overhead" actually is. Can anyone explain to me, or provide me with sources from ...
-1
votes
3answers
67 views
QA time budgetting
I am currently preparing a proposal to a client for a large web application development. My environment is outsourced software development. I need to budget QA time for the project.
Usually, from ...
1
vote
2answers
92 views
Project Management without access to budget or deadlines
A lot of (read:all) project management literature and methodology focuses on knowing your budget and deadlines for when projects need to be completed and how much they should cost.
At my workplace, ...
1
vote
2answers
105 views
Estimating and Project budgets
I'd be interested to hear how you manage dealing with project budgets when having to provide a fixed cost up front for the customer ahead of starting the work?
For context, and without giving too ...
2
votes
2answers
103 views
Accounting for design, discovery and analysis activities in Scrum project budget forecasts
Consider this scenario:
Backlog: 100 story points, project budget $100,000 (based on past team velocity/cost of delivering 1 SP per $1000 time spent). Stories are based on product development.
Week ...
2
votes
2answers
139 views
How can I calculate earned value in MS Project with variable costs?
I'm using MS Project to manage training projects as a vendor. We are currently calculating earned value based on the hours budget for deliverables. However, we often have multiple people on the ...
5
votes
2answers
224 views
How do you financially quantify the 'holding cost' of not releasing items until you have a big batch?
In Don Reinertsen's book - Principles of Product Development Flow - the tradeoff between release size (number of stories) and release cost (regression test cost and release cost) is described like ...
3
votes
2answers
199 views
How can I produce more reliable estimates for technology refresh projects?
After running a few projects that refresh technology rather than add functionality, I've noticed a few recurring themes:
Technology refresh projects are more likely to go over budget/schedule; ...
-3
votes
3answers
115 views
Earned value analysis by client and vendor
We all know that some project managers (those that follow PMBOK/PMP) do earned value analysis to know SPI and CPI.
Schedule Performance Index (SPI) = Earned Value ÷ Planned Value -- How are we doing ...
1
vote
6answers
140 views
Dealing with an agency who can't give a definite quote
I am currently working with an agency for a client to implement new features or fix bugs. The trouble that I am having is that they can never give me a definite quote in terms of hours, their business ...
8
votes
3answers
7k views
How to estimate a project budget using story points?
Current workflow in our company:
I create Given/When/Then scenarios or User stories
Developers estimate Scenarios/User stories in hours, by giving minimum and maximum amount of time for 1 scenario/...
6
votes
2answers
440 views
Who pays when actuals exceed pessimistic estimates?
Scenario:
A Developer estimates between 70 to 100 hours for a task. Due to the urgency of the task and the developer's unavailability, a far less experienced developer is assigned to the project. The ...
5
votes
4answers
170 views
Project constantly running into problems, so how does a PM manage the consistent budget impacts?
With a certain project, I reconcile on a weekly basis to determine its performance, i.e. if estimates are being adhered to or not.
Issue: Every week, the team faces a new issue that wasn't accounted ...
18
votes
4answers
3k views
Budgeting in an agile project
I'm really confused on how agile projects are budgeted for cost and effort before the project starts. Cause the user stories are never completely discussed and estimated as a practice in agile. So if ...
0
votes
4answers
824 views
Who bears the cost of bug fixing in an Agile project?
I'm new to Agile projects.
How do you manage the cost of bug fixing? Does the customer pays for that effort or the software factory?
4
votes
2answers
877 views
Is it possible to do project budgeting within TFS?
I am working for a software company. We are using Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) for our development workflow and it works very well. Now my boss wants to get an overview of the project budget,...
1
vote
2answers
392 views
Adding requirements gathering to the project plan - time phased budget baseline (PMB)
I'm preparing a time phased budget - basically my project schedule with all resources and cost allocated. When its reviewed, I will need to baseline it for calculating variance (tracking) in future. ...
1
vote
2answers
204 views
What's a good way for a Scrum team to handle budgets and work with other departments?
In my organization, the developers are using Scrum (which started recently), but the sysadmins are not.
We're about to start a large project, and we've been asked for detailed description of our ...
-2
votes
1answer
408 views
Development team budget for training and social activities [closed]
I am trying to understand if our team budget is aligned with the outside world,
This is the closest sub forum out there...
For a big company (500+ employees)
What is the budget for 5-10 developers ...
0
votes
1answer
132 views
Calculating and tracking benefits post delivery
Prior to commencing a project we need to justify taking on the project by detailing expected benefits. To date their is no follow up on this information, no way to monitor and no way to calculate ...
0
votes
2answers
224 views
What ways have you reduced cost for a software project during the planning phase?
I am getting ready to head up an internal project. I already know that the budget will be tight on this. I am looking for effective ways to reduce project cost. What I would like to see is the most ...
9
votes
2answers
2k views
How do you plan for risks in your project's estimates?
I have been working on the risk-management topic in software development for a while. According to the different literature there could be knowns knowns (typical risks), known unknowns (product ...
4
votes
2answers
165 views
How involved should a PM be in ensuring payments for completed milestones?
In a project where payments are due according to a set schedule, what is the role of a PM in ensuring these obligations are met?
Example of a payment schedule within an agreement: 50% deposit, 25% ...
3
votes
3answers
217 views
Finding similar projects for cost comparison?
We're developing an application on a contract basis for an arm of a governmental organization.
At the moment, we're students, and payment was slated to done using student funding avenues.
However, I'...
5
votes
4answers
503 views
Trying to develop a Project Health Check tool - How can I show the Health of a Project in Dollars and Hours?
My projects generally have 6 areas (Engineering, Fabrication, Assembly etc). Each area has been allotted a budget for a particular project (dollars and hours).
Every week, I get a report on how much ...
1
vote
2answers
2k views
The meaning of & Calculating Project Budget
I'm very new to the whole Project Management world, so this question may be at the beginners level, anywho:
What is the Budget Cost compared to the full Cost of the Project?, based on the research I ...
6
votes
5answers
617 views
My boss says a Senior PM should show more commitment
As a PM I am working with a team and I almost always define our times, however, sometimes my boss stipulates a deadline to the presentation, and even when I discuss it with him he explains the project ...
12
votes
4answers
21k views
In Scrum, who is responsible for the project's budget?
I have read many books about Scrum, blogs and academic articles. Though, all of them dodge from explicitly acknowledging this question:
Who is responsible for the project's money? Why is this person ...
4
votes
4answers
186 views
Is there a difference in methodology between low and high budget projects?
I ask the question since I'm a relatively new PM (less than 3 years). Currently, the project budget I deal with are around the $250K mark with a 4-6 month timeline (our hourly rate is $250/hour). Now ...
4
votes
9answers
4k views
Should a project Manager include his own cost when costing a project?
Should a project Manager include his own cost when costing a project? I have included the cost of resources I have hired to work on the project, but should I include my own cost to the business in the ...
9
votes
17answers
670 views
What is the main factor that makes your project not meet its goals most of the time? [closed]
What is the most common problem you face regularly and how you can avoid it?
I wonder if we, as a community, will agree on the same thing?
I ask for some short answers (just in a few words) to ...
3
votes
2answers
220 views
Developing a digital strategy
I work in Australia for one of the world's largest companies. Our marketing team has a large budget for IT (information technology) projects but has very little direction or guidance in the way that ...
4
votes
2answers
973 views
Database of project proposals
In academia we constantly need to write project proposals and apply for funding. Sometimes it helps to read what others have already tried or written in order to learn from them.
I wonder whether ...
3
votes
3answers
146 views
How to decide to take a project when it's depending on a tool your team doesn't know?
It happened to me recently, I'm kinda newbie on PMing, so I ask this to an experienced community.
A potential client contacted me through the guy (intermediary) who offered the job to me. But to ...
5
votes
4answers
300 views
How to Give Better Estimations to Customers
We are working in an environment where customers give us thick requirement documents and they expect the technical team to do an estimation on the whole requirement. Once they receive our estimates, ...
13
votes
5answers
4k views
Justifying a Project Manager
I work at a small company our development team is just me and a jr. developer. We just hired another intern.
I'm having a hard time justifying to my boss that we need a project manager. What are ...
10
votes
7answers
2k views
A project manager should know how much his/her project members earn monthly?
A project budget includes fixed and variable costs. In most cases (especially in weak matrix and pure functional organizations) salaries of project members are variable costs. In order to calculate ...
