20 Tips on Managing & Reducing Project Costs

Managing Costs on Your Project Project Cost management is perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of project management.

As project managers we are well practiced at acquiring resources, assigning work, tracking progress and completing projects. But since there’s a cost associated with nearly everything our job becomes much more complex and challenging.

We need to be sure the cost of the project is estimated accurately at the beginning, budgets are assigned for various parts of the project and we have the tools to control costs throughout the Project Lifecycle.

The pmp-practitioners group have developed the following tips to help you control your Project Costs:

1, Clearly define and prioritise requirements

2, Identify direct and indirect costs and key cost drivers and dependencies and understand cost/time relationships

3,Validate forecasts and estimates especially on demand

4,

5, Optimise cost / benefit ratios and ensure accountability is matched with responsibility

6, Reduce scope where little added value is evident

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8,Continually focus on critical path and activities

9, Avoid managing by task due dates

10, Plan task durations so that they are carried out sequentially in order of priority

11, Provide timely task and predecessor task completion updates

12, Proactively obtain information and secure resources to complete tasks

13, Report on task completion and provide alerts and act on issues immediately

14, Use Agile techniques in systems projects, using joint workshops and cross functional teams of users and developers to deliver iterative solutions

15, Use cross functional teams or hit squads to address issues

16, Use project and resource management software that provides resource availability and task completion alerts/triggers; escalation filters and root cause analysis; and exception reporting on tasks not started, not progressing and/or escalated

17, Continually measure earned value and alternative ways of meeting project deadlines

18, Regularly produce estimates to complete and review actual costs and revenue to date against the original business case

19, Enforce tight discipline and adherence to agreed change and risk management approach

20, Engender an open honest “no surprises” culture with constant communication on progress and reinforcement of objectives.

So what is the 21st tip on managing Project Costs?

Let us know, win the a copy of:

The Essentials of Project Management by Dennis Lock…

Enter the competition by submitting your tip to: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8200128/

Please note the Business Case is the foundation to a Projects success: https://pmp-practitioners.com/it-is-a-long-established/