IT Application Development - with SDLC.pptx

Editor's Notes

• #2: Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
• #6: Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
• #13: 1. Use Historical Data Your project is likely not the first to try and accomplish a specific objective or goal. Looking back at similar projects and their budgets is a great way to get a head start on building your budget. 2. Reference Lessons Learned To further elaborate on historical data, you can learn from their successes and mistakes. It provides a clear path that leads to more accurate estimates. You can even learn about how they responded to changes and kept their budget under control. Here’s a lessons learned template if you need to start tracking those findings in your organization. 3. Leverage Your Experts Another resource to build a project budget is to tap those who have experience and knowledge—be they mentors, other project managers or experts in the field. Reaching out to those who have created budgets can help you stay on track and avoid unnecessary pitfalls. 4. Confirm Accuracy Once you have your budget, you’re not done. You want to take a look at it and make sure your figures are accurate. During the project is not the time to find a typo. You can also seek those experts and other project team members to check the budget and make sure it’s right. 5. Baseline and Re-Baseline the Budget Your project budget is the baseline by which you’ll measure your project’s progress once it has started. It is a tool to gauge the variance of the project. But, as stated above, you’ll want to re-baseline as changes occur in your project. Once the change control board approves any change you need to re-baseline. Project management software makes setting a baseline simple. Take ProjectManager, all you have to do is open up the settings on your Gantt and select set a baseline. Now you have the planned effort saved and you can compare it to your actual effort as you execute the project. You can reset the baseline as many times as you need during the project to always be able to measure your project variance instantly. Try our tool for free today.  Set baselines, track costs and more with our award-winning Gantt charts.Learn more 6. Update in Real Time Speaking of changes, the sooner you know about them, the better. If your project planning software isn’t cloud-based and updating as soon as your team changes its status, then you’re wasting valuable and expensive time. 7. Get on Track The importance of having a project management software that tracks in real time, like ProjectManager, is that it gives you the information you need to get back on track sooner rather than later. Things change and projects go off track all the time. It’s the projects that get back on track faster that are successful. If you manage your project expenses using these building blocks you’re going to have a sound foundation for your project’s success. Project Budget Example To further illustrate how a project budget is created, let’s pretend we’re making an app. The first thing you’ll need to figure out is the costs for labor and materials. You’ll need programmers, designers, content developers a dev team, etc. It helps list all the tasks and assign the team to them—a hallmark of good task management. This way every penny is accounted for. With the tasks broken down for the project and your team in place, you’ll next need to look into whatever materials will be needed. Will they need laptops, other devices and equipment? This must be accounted for. Now note other line items. There might be travel expenses and renting space to house the team. Then there are fixed items that are true for any project. These are things where the cost is set and will not change over the course of the project. You’ll also want a column for any miscellaneous costs that don’t fit elsewhere in the budget.