Resource-Budget reconciliation

The initial setup phase of a project is always the most exciting; but often it is also the most frantic. I have spent most of the past week securing the right resources I need for project Condor. It has been difficult because :

• I do not know enough about the detailed work to be done to know who best to assign it to
• I do not know enough about the people who work here to know who best to assign.

As of this afternoon, however, I have sufficient candidates to get the job done. There remains the less-exciting tasks of getting some of them released from their current assignments (because Condor has priority) and filling in 20-odd resource request forms. Ugh!

The last thing I did this afternoon was to try to reconcile the people assigned with the original effort and hence the project budget. When I plot out each persons effort across the project timeline and multiply that by their man-day rate, I get a figure approximately 230 man-days over the allocated budget. Ooops. So tomorrow, in between meetings, I am going to have to go back over everything again and check that the people I have asked for, and their allocated time and cost, fit within the available budget.

What fun:-(

It occurred to me during all this that I do not have a simple tool to do all of the following:

• specify my resource requirements
• allocate people to each role across the project timeline
• calculate the effort of each person (or group of people) and the total effort and cost.

By the time I get everyone allocated, I resolve to have created a tool.

Over budget is fine

"When it comes to project finance, there are only two states that raise concerns in my mind," said my Boss to S, our newbie PM.

"One - you come in exactly on budget. That says you are being very creative with the figures and are managing the budget not your project. And Two - you come in under budget."

Wait a minute - under budget doesn't concern you?

Yep. In an organisation like ours, in which project costs comprise solely the man-day rate applicable to the people working on the project, if you get the number of people right and the duration of the project right, you should come in pretty darn close to your budget. Easy.

If you come in under budget, you have over-estimated. If you are a little over-budget (within contingency), you have done your job. If you are a lot over-budget, you didn't do your job properly, because you did not get authorisation for the additional spend - change control, dummy!

The 'fun' part of managing IT projects around here is in dealing with all the minor crises that inevitably arise that cause your beautifully crafted plan to gradually evolve into something virtually unrecognisable from the version that was originally approved.