During planning, when thinking through the resources that are needed, it is tempting just to consider people. But resources come in various other ‘flavors’! All of these contribute to the final cost of the project.

Similar to people, other types of resource may also have availability problems – not just their cost.

When performing cost (budget) planning, it is vital to obtain a complete picture of ALL resources. After all, the tasks don't consume resources - it's the resources USED to complete the tasks that consume.

As a start consider these categories of resources.

Use them when estimating down at task level, and also when considering broader management time/effort/cost type activities -- such project management, meetings, reporting, quality work, communication (a real biggie!), monitoring and control, and the actual planning sessions themselves (did you include the cost of creating the Plan in your budget?)
 
So here are some thoughts to include under the title of resources:

• Individuals-including hourly cost rates
• Skill sets
• Other groups (cross charge of costs)
• Third parties  (cross charge of costs)
• Facilities costs
• Equipment costs
• Tools costs
• Finance (budgets alocation and cost plans)
• Assets
• Buildings/office space
• Transport/Travel
• Hotels/ Accommodation - travel accomodation costs
• Systems
• Services (internal and external)
• Technology (laptops/broadband/spreadsheets/internet/etc)

…….and I’ll bet you can add some more….!

So the next time your project is over budget – it wasn’t due to your estimating accuracy – you just forgot a bunch of stuff!

When performing project planning, and the brainstorming of tasks, consider using Post-It Notes to capture cost information. These can be used to create a large PERT/Dependency diagram. Include on the back of each Note, a list of costs fro each task (the bulleted list above is a good start...)

Go on...make a list right now for your current project....

Wishing You Whole Life Success,

David Geoffrey Litten

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