Project Cost Management.

Chapter 6

(part 2)

Project Cost Management.

Objectives:

 Define and understand key cost management terms

 Understand all the components of a project budget

Cost Management consists of 2 main components:

- estimate costs - determine budget

Cost Management: main parts

Importance of Cost Management Planning

 Cost is a resourcesacrificed or fore-gone to achieve a specific objective or something given up in exchange

 Costs are usually measured in monetary units like dollars  Project cost managementis concerned with the

1) planning, 2) estimating, 3) budgeting, and 4) control

of the cost of project resources needed to complete 100% of the activities of the project

 Cost estimating:developing an estimate of the costs and resources needed to complete an entire project

 Cost budgeting:allocating the overall cost estimate to individual work items to establish a baseline for measuring performance

Basic Principles of Cost Management

 Burden Rate

 is the overall cost of a human resource which takes into consideration more than just his/her salary or hourly rate, for things such as benefits, medical insurance, paid vacation and holidays, etc.

 Direct vs. Indirect Costs

 Direct costs are directly attributable to the activities of the project (purchasing hardware or software, labor cost of workers on the team.

 Indirect costs, the opposite of direct, are costs that are not directly attributable to the activities of the project (overhead rates such as energy costs, rents, etc.).

 Recurring vs. Nonrecurring costs

 Recurring costs appear more than once throughout the life of the project (annual hardware and software maintenance).

 Nonrecurring (one-time) costs appear only once (initial purchase cost of hardware and software).  Fixed vs. Variable Costs

 Fixed costs are expenses whose total does not change in proportion to the activity of a business or project, within the relevant time period or scale of production (rent, insurance).

 Variable costs change based on the activity of a business or project (project employee costs).  Sunk Cost

 Cost expended that cannot be retrieved on a product or service. Money already spent that can not be recovered

 Life Cycle Costs

 All costs incurred over the life time of the product or service

Basic Principles of Cost Management

 Reserves are dollars included in a cost estimate to mitigate cost risk by allowing for future situations that are difficult to predict. (Critical Chain buffers)

 Contingency reserves allow for future situations that may be partially planned for (sometimes called known unknowns) and are included in the project cost baseline  Management reserves allow for future situations that are unpredictable (sometimes

called unknown unknowns)

 The cost estimating process is used to develop accurate cost estimates for the resources needed to complete each activity of the project

 The human resource and time estimates have already been done, so in this part of the process simply apply the relevant burden rate for each selected resource

 Next, accurate cost estimates need to be created for all types of resources not just human resources such as: materials, equipment, and facilities

Lab 2:

Project Cost Management

(Project Cost Estimates)

Function Points (FP)-Based

Project Cost Estimate

(create Excel electronic spreadsheets at home based on your

PERSONALIZED

Lab2 assignment)

Function Point (FP-Based) Approach

The estimated number of FP is derived:

FP

= count-total 3 [0.65 + 0.01 3 S (F

)]

FP

= 375

organizational average productivity = 6.5 FP/pm.

burdened (above and beyond) labor rate = $8000 per month, approximately

$1230/FP.

Based on the FP estimate and the historical productivity data,

total estimated

project cost is $461,000 and estimated effort is 58 person-months.

FP-Based Approach: Pros and Cons

Advantages:

 It is independent of programming language and technology

 It can be used early in the project life cycle at the end of the requirements discovery phase or design phase

 A wealth of research exists to support the process

 Impact of scope changes easier for all to comprehend and track

 Organizations can track their own results and improve the function point estimates  It can be used in any development environment

Disadvantages:

 Requires many subjective evaluations (complexity ratings and environmental factors)  Accuracy is greatly increased only after the detailed design phase or after a few project

iterations have been performed

 Takes some time (training) to perfect and can vary depending on who is doing the calculations due to personal bias

Lab2: FP-Based Estimation (2/4)

Lab2: FP-Based Estimation (4/4)

Lines of Code (LOC)-Based

Project Cost Estimate

(create Excel electronic spreadsheets at home based

on your

PERSONALIZED

Lab2 assignment)

Lines of Code (LOC)-Based Approach

1. Average productivity for systems of this type = 620 LOC/pm.

2. Burdened labor rate =$8000 per month, the cost per line of code is

approximately $13.

3. Based on the LOC estimate and the historical productivity data, the total

estimated project cost is

$431,000 and the estimated effort is 54

person-months.

LOC-Based Estimation: Tools Available

(for example, OHLOC tool)

Task Sizing Method: Lines of Code (LOC)

 Has been one of the most used methods  Based on historical results

 Effort, dollars, documentation, software bugs, and number of resources Advantages

 Can be very quick and inexpensive to generate  Can be done early in the process

 Universal metric

 Can be generated easily, in most environments automatically  Facilitate a lessons-learned process

Disadvantages

 Must compensate for technology differences  Can’t be done well unless relevant history exists  Must determine what counts as a line of code  What level of resource is generating the code  No industry standards

 Need to distinguish between auto-generated code and original work  Needs to be continually updated

Project Cost Estimate: Hourly Rates

(create Excel electronic spreadsheets at home

based on your

PERSONALIZED

Lab2

assignment)

Project Cost Estimate: Materials’ Table

(create Excel electronic spreadsheets at home based

on your

PERSONALIZED

Lab2 assignment)

The Bottom Line:

Project Cost Budget

PM presents to the stakeholders and project team the entire picture of all costs (one-time, recurring, HR, materials, etc.) for the project

taking into account all of the following cost categories: direct and indirect, recurring and nonrecurring, fixed and variable, and all life cycle costs

Chapter 6

(part 2)

Project Cost Management.

The Time & Cost Planning Process

1.

Define project activities to the “right” level of detail in the WBS

(decomposition), so that they are assignable, assessable, and controllable

2.

Define the sequence of activities and also the type of dependency

(mandatory, discretionary, external) between all tasks on the WBS

3.

Assign the right resources to work on each activity based on the skills

needed to perform the work, resource availability and budget restrictions

4.

Create time estimates for each activity; accuracy dependent on need and

capabilities of the estimator

5.

Build the project schedule and understand and identify the critical

path, critical chain, and available slack for each activity

6.

Perform resource leveling to ensure a workable schedule and

maximize worker productivity

7.

Assign costs for all resources throughout the project schedule

8.

Build and finalize the initial project budget (including all elements of

the budget) which will establish your project baseline

9.

Obtain sponsor approval to proceed