Studies show that projects commonly exceed their original budget estimates. There are many reasons for why this is so; however, the fact remains that estimating and budgeting are weak areas for most project managers and project-driven organizations.

In this half-day session, participants will learn different ways of estimating that are suited to the different risk profiles of projects, different types of contingencies and how to use them effectively to manage risk, how project budget estimates fit into organizational fiscal budgeting and project governance frameworks, and how to use project performance metrics to more accurately forecast project expenditures until project completion on both traditional (waterfall) and agile projects.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Describe the differences between allocation and estimation
• Describe the elements of a project budget
• Describe the different kinds of contingency and their use
• Develop a project budget
• Track project budget performance
• Forecast EAC (estimate at completion)
• Understand the differences between waterfall and agile approaches to budget tracking and forecasting

Who Should Participate

This course is ideal for project managers, project engineers, functional managers, and senior team members responsible for providing estimates as part of a project or departmental budgeting process.

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this course.

Materials

Participants receive a workbook with copies of all of the course slides and case study materials.