Overview: Securing continued project funding
This post is going to cover the important topic of continued project funding. While a lot of effort goes into preparing the original business case and securing the original budget, the reality is that this is only the first budget approval of many over the life time of a project. The Project Funding Challenge It…
PMO Tip – make sure your numbers add up in your project management reports
This may sound like a strange statement, “make sure your numbers add up in your management report”. However, the fastest way that a PMO can lose credibility, is by publishing reports with mathematical errors. This is very frustrating as a small slip, taking your eye of the ball due to being busy and, a reputation…
Example of simple PMO cost trend analysis tool
The last post, How a PMO can use cost trend analysis to identify project budget under and overruns, it covered how using cost trend analysis can help a PMO quickly identify where there may be budget issues. This post will cover a simple approach that can be used to conduct this analysis. Objective The objective…
How a PMO can use cost trend analysis to identify budget under and overruns
One of the responsibilities of project manager is to manage the project budget. This covers, estimating the initial budget (in most cases or at least reviewing), creating a monthly budget plan, tracking progress (actual) spend and then re-forecasting budget required (known as the estimate to complete – ETC). Unfortunately, while some project managers are very…
PMO tools – project procurement
Procurement is often over looked when setting up a PMO. This is usually because there is some form of process for securing external resources, software, vendor, etc (or the true reality, smart people know a way of getting it done). Interestingly, the Project Management Institute dedicate an entire chapter in the PMBOK (book of knowledge)…
PMO tools – project financial planning
This blog post continues the unpacking of the key processes to successfully setting up a PMO. It very surprising how many project managers do not see the requirement for accurate, transparent financial reporting of their project or programme. To be clear, financial planning relates to the project manager creating a budget of the anticipated costs…
5 reasons why a project should have a business case
5 reasons why it makes sense for a project to have a business case. At the bottom of the post you will find a presentation version of this post. 1. Ensure project is aligned to strategy In most organisations, budget and people are a scarce commodity. Therefore, it is important that projects are aligned to…
