It’s been said that budget is a proxy for project planning: by the time you’ve completed your budget, you should feel like you’ve walked through your entire project. Great in theory. But for a variety of reasons, IT projects have the unfortunate tendency to run over budget. As IT systems become an even more integral part of businesses, projects are touching more parts of an organization. That increases the risk to your company if something goes wrong.
Project Management Budgeting Tools
IT projects typically run anywhere from 45% to 85% over budget. With statistics like that, it’s obvious that getting your budget right from the start is critical to your company’s bottom line. What helps keep a project budget on track? For starters, the ability to continually forecast the budget, regularly forecast resource usage, meticulously manage scope, and keep the team informed of progress and changes.
Project management budgeting tools can help you estimate, monitor, and manage risk appropriately. They also let you effectively communicate the budget status throughout the project life cycle. Here are some of the most popular tools available today:
- A project management and collaboration tool all in a simple spreadsheet, Smartsheet is an easy and flexible online project management tool that includes features such as Gantt charts, card view, and work automation. It lets you share work in real time and integrates with many of the apps you probably already use.
- Mavenlink promises to take you beyond project management with time tracing, resource planning, and project financial features. The cloud-based solution helps you manage the entire project delivery life cycle.
- If you want to finally eliminate those long email threads, dapulse is designed for teams of all sizes, making collaboration simpler with easy color-coded visualization of where a project stands. There’s 24/7 online support and pricing scales with your workforce.
- Wrike’s end-to-end solution helps you manage projects from start to finish, and is an ideal choice for tracking project progress without the need for countless meetings and emails. It’s a budget management program with a slew of advanced features like restricted data access and custom workflows.
- Workfront is a cloud-based IT project management solution that manages every detail of enterprise work. You can streamline requests, plan and prioritize projects, and digitally review assets. Totally customizable to your organization’s needs, the software helps you monitor the costs of projects and report to stakeholders any discrepancies that vary from the budget.
Stay on Budget
The budget is a living part of every project and must be reviewed with teams and stakeholders on a regular basis throughout a project’s life cycle. Effective project cost control involves regularly monitoring and measuring budget performance. Project management tools can help
a project manager control costs and ensure every project finishes on time and on budget. That keeps management and stakeholders happy and protects your company’s bottom line.
It’s been said that budget is a proxy for project planning: by the time you’ve completed your budget, you should feel like you’ve walked through your entire project. Great in theory. But for a variety of reasons, IT projects have the unfortunate tendency to run over budget. As IT systems become an even more integral part of businesses, projects are touching more parts of an organization. That increases the risk to your company if something goes wrong.