Determining budget

Because we all use software of some kind, it makes sense that as we add costs to project work, the software is adding them all up together and giving us an aggregated total project budget. That doesn't mean, however, that everyone will be happy to sign off on that significant number and accept it outright. In many cases, the business case or a contract is driving the budget from the beginning. If you are given budgetary constraints to work with upfront, then you will spend your time splitting that significant number into price tags rather than doing the opposite of estimating first and then budgeting. Either way, the budget and its inevitable baseline are time phased. More money is spent during the execution of project work than it is during planning. Changes are more comfortable to adapt to during planning and less expensive to make than during project execution. The cost baseline, when represented visually in a chart, is low expenditures at the beginning,...