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How do you define success of a project? What perspective will you consider to evaluate project success: Customer’s perspective who has been delivered "quality" outcome or a vendor’s perspective who has delivered project on time and within budget? Or take a holistic view where customer evaluates - what difference has the project made to its organization (revenue, cost saving, resource utilization, etc). Yes, delivery timeline is an important factor in evaluating whether project is successful or not. The reality is - the financial numbers matter the most. Typically the bottom-line decides whether a given project was delivered successfully for a company or not.
One cannot measure performance of projects or your department or your organization unless you have specific metrics to refer. Most projects driven organizations, before kicking off projects, make certain financial provisions (which we call it as project budgeting). The project budget is part of departmental budget, which in turn is constituent of (program budget) or indirectly part of organization wide financial financial planning.
Because most projects are tracked for budget, estimated cost, actual cost and billing; there is an implied need of software to make things easier for project manager and team members. Project management software like ZilicusPM allows project manager to manage financial status of projects. Let’s look at what all financial aspect of project, project manager can control.
As department level budget is allocated and this budget is further cascaded to project level; project manager can start planning project activities keeping project budget in mind. In fact, more often than not you will find that; based on project plan (estimated cost), project manager demand for project budget and then the financial allocation is made.
As project manager breaks down project deliverable into finite tasks, he/she knows what kind of resources are required, what will be typical cost can be expected. As the estimation at task level, consider resources and fixed and other cost are determined, project manager know what will be the estimated cost the project will incur.
The estimated project cost can be different than project budget however as I mentioned earlier, project budget is allocated knowing estimated project cost. Since project may face change requests, schedule changes, resources change and such factors affect the estimated cost of the project. And these may overshoot the estimated project cost over budget.
Project team then starts working on project and the project is delivered in stages (WBS). Project team members enter timesheet details using time tracking software for the work they have done for project tasks. Depending on resource type, cost and number of hours he/she has entered in timesheet software, it drives the actual cost for task and in turn the actual cost of project.
There are also project expenses recorded against tasks. The project expense management software makes it easier for project team members to record expenses against tasks --
Typically projects billed to customer in following manner
And depending on above scheme, the information provided by project staff, the billability of the project is calculated and presented to customer as invoice. Many companies use timesheet software to calculate project billability because, in case of ‘At actual resource rate’ type of billing methodology, timesheet software allows them to provide breakup of activities staff member have worked in a given project.
One can also estimate project revenue based on the project schedule and resource billing rates.
Earned value management is technique used by traditional project management professionals. But it has meanining and utility even in case of fast changing projects. Exactly knowing how much value are we earning at every stage of project is nothing but justification to client about the value being delivered.
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Finally all financial information can be presented in the reports and dashboard form. Such presentation of data gives clear picture to project and portfolio manager about financial status of individual project and portfolio of projects - knowing whether a given project is overshooting budget or making enough margin or not. The project reports and dashboard help project manager to make prudent financial decisions during the course of project planning and execution.
The question one may ask is - why online project management software to manage project budget, expenses, cost and revenue? Because it offers a central place for all team members to submit project financial- timesheet and expenses details, and project manager can easily review all of these before approving; make necessary correction and re-approve these to reflect correct financial status of project. You can track project budget, cost and revenue almost real time; It helps you to make righteous decisions for projects and your organization.
About Zilicus: ____________________________________________________________________
ZilicusPM is project management tool that offers an incredibly simple and collaborative way to manage projects. Try ZilicusPM a powerful tool to stay on top of things with aesthetic dashboard. ZilicusPM enables online project management - planning WBS, online scheduling, resource assignment, Gantt chart, project tracking, issue tracking, online project calendar, project risk management software and much more. Sign up for 30-days risk free trial.
