Thursday, November 29, 2012

Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources


Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources

Learning about the different responsibilities, roles, performance tasks or duties of a project manager has really unfastened my eyes completely throughout this course. I’ve learned thus far that instructional designers find themselves being managed by a project manager, may be performing every role an must manage themselves, or may serve as the project manager and be less involved with the day-to-day development, Stolovitch (n.d.). Budrovich (n.d.) explained that every project requires the management of five variables: time, resources, expertise, quality, and scope. With that in mind, each component of a project has to have a budget that is formed by estimating costs and allocating resources to get the project completed successfully. There are so many resources and tools to utilize to assist a novice to experience project manager during a project. The Bright Hub PM website provides forms/templates, and software on Excel project budgets. They have created Excel forms for overall project budget, monthly project budget, and task project budget. So there is no need to recreate the wheel when you have templates/forms already out there and accessible to use. This would save time, which is a very crucial component of a project. Check out the site by clicking on the link below.



EnrichUK Good Practice Guidebook also provided a great amount of useful information on the vital steps of taking on a project and completing it successfully. I focused in on the following sections: planning tools and techniques, risk management, costs and budgets, and monitoring and controlling sections because these are the phases that I’m learning and constructing currently during this course. I gained valuable information and I suggest you check out this website also. Allocating resources for a project seems to be the main stress that a project manager has to experience to make sure the budget is accurate in order to fulfill the requirements for each task/activities included in a project.




References

Bowen, R. & McDonough, M (2011). Use Our Excel Project Budget Template to
     Simplify Your Life. Bright Hub Inc. Retrieved on 11/29/12, from:



EnrichUK Good Practice. Project Management. (2004). Retrieved on11/29/12, from: http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/nof/support/gpg/ProjectManagement/#Costingandbudgets


Stolovich, H. (n.d.). Project Management and Instructional Design. [Video Media].
     Laureate, Inc.

2 comments:

  1. The Bright Hub templates seem very useful for breaking down the budget. Thanks for the helpful resource.
    Melissa

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  2. You and I both found that Bright Hub was a very helpful website. I liked that it has many templates to choose from and that it explains each step in the project management process. I have used this site to help me understand the different charts that we have had to work on in this class. I also liked that the site offered many different links. I have found creating the budget to be the most difficult part of the process. Having templates and examples really help me in this new learning experience. Thank you for providing these resources.

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