Overall cost for project

[skillihe]

Hi is there any way for Project to assign costs/hours to resources based on
an overall project baseline cost? I'm not sure if 'Baseline' is even the
right word.. just the overall projected cost of the ..project. I'm not having
much luck finding where I can put in the budget so that the other costs toe
the line. If anyone can help please give me a shout.

Cheers,

 

[Rod Gill]

You mean you want the button that adjust your schedule to show what your
management want to see? It's called the I'm feeling lucky button and in
spite of urgent requests and pleading with the project team they haven't
implemented it yet!!

Step 1. Schedule the project as best you can. Select tools, tracking, save
baseline. This is now your budget. Continue to evolve your schedule as you
learn more about the project. Be aware that estimates made before the
detailed design are typically +-400% in error!!

Step 2. If as you evolve the schedule and costs start to go way above the
baseline, then if fixed cost is an important deliverable, ask for a
stakeholder review because you should possibly recommend cancelling the
project.

Project adds value only when you let it calculate likely scenarios for you.
When you try to force a result you are simply using Project as an expensive
drawing tool for you Gantt chart and you might as well use some creative
accounting in Excel for your budget.

 

[Steve House [Project MVP]]

Project doesn't "assign costs" to anything. It looks at what a resource
costs per hour, mutilplies that by the hours the resource is employed to do
the work that needs to be done, and totes it up. I think you're thinking of
a top-down budget where senior management says "this project will cost XX
dollars- see to it." But that's not the way Project works - in fact it's
completely ignorant of top-down budgeting. Instead it looks at the specific
work to be done and estimates how much it will cost to do it. One can hope
that the figure it computes will be less than the amount senior management
has allocated - if it's not, it's telling you it will be impossible to
finish the project within budget and it might be time to update your resume
<grin>. The baseline is NOT the figure management has handed you. It is
what you have estimated to be the actual cost to do the work. It is a
baseline in that you save it before actually starting work so you have a
reference point to compare actual expenses later on to see if you're
on-track or things are getting out of control.