Abstract Evaluating cost baselines and developing and refining stable and flexible cost schedules can be tricky especially in the cases where complicated project based activities are involved. This is because each project may involve a number of factors, each having its own dynamics that have a potential to implicate on the overall cost structure and thus each of these variables and their possible implications have to be taken into account in order ensure the efficiency of the project in terms of both cost and time. Introduction Unlike conventional forms of financial management, cost management has a backbone effect in any kind of project management as not only does it ensures efficiency in terms of costs, but also efficiency in terms of time and output. The aim to incorporate cost management in organizational operations especially when planning outputs or evaluating viability of a project, cost management helps giving out result oriented indicators that help in decision making that can reduce the level of risk of misjudgement (Richman, 2002). That said, cost management is based on a lot of assumptions, presumptions and fluctuating factors that may implicate the indicators given out by existing cost schedules. This calls for cost schedules to be flexible and keep enough room to accommodate any instability or unforeseen changes and also calls for making certain assumptions so that variables that can fluctuate at a high rate can be stabilized when making calculations.
Along with the Benefit Measurement Method, Constrained optimization method can also be used which involves mathematical approach. Since this method involves the mathematical approach, several calculations are performed in order to take a decision to accept or reject the project. “Mathematical models, also known as Constrained Optimization Methods, are a category of project selection methods, which is a tool and technique of the Develop Project Charter process” (PMP, 2008). Cost-benefit analysis is one of the methods which fall into this category. All the positives and negatives of the project are taken into consideration and then the negatives are carefully excluded from the benefits. Different results are produced for the different projects. The most worthy and financially rewarding option are selected from these results. When employing this method, there are many things that are to be considered such as the impact of the decision on the development of the organization in the future, the length of time the equipment lasts and whether it is possible to do the cost control during the project.
Cost Management is used to outline the costs of planning a project. Estimating costs through data collection, design planning, and budgeting are used throughout facility planning to reduce costs
592 Week 1 DQ 1 WBS Construction PROJ 592 Week 1 DQ 2 Project Cost Estimates and Assumptions PROJ 592 Week 2 DQ 1 Cost Components PROJ 592 Week 2 DQ 2 Estimating Processes PROJ 592 Week 3 DQ 1 Project Schedules PROJ 592 Week 3 DQ 2 Sensitivity Analysis PROJ 592 Week 4 DQ 1 Resource Allocation and Leveling PROJ 592 Week 4 DQ 2 Advanced Schedule Techniques PROJ 592 Week 5 DQ 1 Earned Value Calculation PROJ 592 Week 5 DQ 2 Project Monitoring and Control & EV PROJ 592 Week 6 DQ 1 Forecasting Project Completion Cost PROJ 592 Week 6 DQ 2 Project Control PROJ 592
A) The weekly budget is formed by only using the early start times of each activity.
Cost and Value management is becoming a large part of companies competing in today’s market. According to the text, “projects and their effective management can provide organizations with a significant competitive edge through cost reduction, enhanced responsiveness, and overall value to customers.” (Venkataraman & Pinto, 2008, p. 1). In this paper we are going to focus on some of the techniques and how they can either help or hinder a project. Through information and examples we will explore the importance of work packages and the work breakdown structure (WBS), establishing a cost and schedule performance
If a good cost-measurement system was set up, cost-plus contracts will demonstrate the advantages of cost-management better than fixed price contracts do. With a robust cost-measurement system, managers are able to know the real revenue drivers, to recognize the most valuable customers, and to offer more reasonable price bid. That is to say, cost-measurement system’s strength lies in differentiating clients’ value, projects’ value and operation processes’ value case by case. Under this circumstance, cost-plus contracts would surely dig more utilization and benefit more from such a system, because CitySoft would be able to charge different customers and projects for different prices, which is critical for increasing profitability.
We used PV (planned Value), AC (actual cost), and EV (earned value) to calculate SPI (schedule performance index), SV (schedule variance), CPI (cost performance index), and CV (cost variance). Among these indicators, SPI and SV show whether a project is behind schedule or not, and CPI and CV indicate whether a project is under budget. Therefore, the statuses of the schedule and cost of technical infrastructure, software customization, and combined projects can be easily and clearly checked, respectively.
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Cost controlling means amending the cost of project by monitoring project status and controlling variation of the cost base line. From this case, I found that some methods were done for the cost change. The methods are list as following:
‘’Cost performance on project s often poor, what are the possible causes of this and how can it be improved?’’
The purpose of this paper is to answer a few important questions: Why do companies allocate costs? How do companies allocate costs? And how this cost allocation can affect the decision making of the company. It is important for the companies to find the proper method to allocate the costs. Cost allocation is an important issue in many companies because many of the costs associated with designing, producing and distributing products and services are not easily identified with the products and services that are created. It would have been easier for companies to allocate cost if costs were directly traceable with the products and the cost allocation would have been minor issue for the company. The decision-making
According to an accounting textbook, cost is defined as a resource sacrificed or foregone to achieve a specific objective. It is something given up in exchange. It is necessary for project managers to understand project cost management since project costs money and consumes resources.
Project Cost Management – controlling the cost of the project, which includes estimating, budgeting, financing, funding, and managing costs of each task.
In field of project management, there are a plethora of mechanisms under perpetual reevaluation. One specific segmentation of project management under such scrutiny pertains to cost duration, which is the time and monetary costs of completing individual tasks within the project’s critical path (IBM Knowledge Center, 2016). The process of monitoring and evaluating the time and financial impacts of each task is referred to as cost duration analysis (IBM Knowledge Center, 2016). A chief concern of cost duration analysis is identifying tasks within the project’s critical path which can reduce project duration (PMI, 2013). A common approach to reducing a project’s duration is task “crashing” (PMI, p.181). According to The Project Management Institute (2013) crashing refers to the process of methodical determining the financial value of increasing a critical path task’s resources in order to decrease project duration (p.181).
budget. As the project evolves, additional information is discovered and further estimates are produced. This is an extremely important process and we cannot emphasize enough the need for this re‐estimation or re‐budgeting process at each phase of the project. In any case, for the purpose of this article, we will call the revised budget the "actual budget." Another standard activity is to provide management with an expected cash flow. From a financial perspective this is an important activity, but it also can be used as your cost expectation.