This week focus on developing a Budget and Schedule for your project.

The activities performed in Time Management$/$project schedule are essential to budget development. These activities are your base tools for creating and maintaining budgets.

In project management, the project schedule is a document that, if properly prepared, is usable for planning, execution, monitoring$/$controlling$,$ and communicating the delivery of the scope to the stakeholders. The main purpose of project scheduling is to represent the plan to deliver the project scope over time.

The project scheduling process includes:

Define Activities $($work elements$)$

Sequence Activities

Estimate Activity Resources

Estimate Activity Duration

Every project budget plan has a few considerations to think through before you can dive into assembling the budget itself. Here are the most significant ones.

$1.$ Cost Estimates $-$ Remember that you are only creating an estimate. So focus on making your best effort to capture the resource needs for a project accurately and to be as realistic as you can with cost estimates without being too conservative in your numbers

$2.$ Budget contingency $-$ The biggest challenge with project management budget planning is the unknown. Even with a detailed estimate of costs and resources, unexpected delays or changes in the project may necessitate budget revisions. Therefore, just like how a project plan will incorporate some slack in its timelines, it$$s a good idea to set aside a sort of emergency fund for the unforeseen. This is called a contingency.

$3.$ Budget monitoring $-$ Just like you$$d track project activities, you want to track and monitor expenditures throughout the project. Project budget management ensures the project stays in line with the budget. Explain how you plan to monitor the budget.