ABSTRACT
The Defensible Plan ensures that everything needed is budgeted and ‘provided for’. Projects’ budgets run adrift when halfway through implementation it is found that needed resources have not been budgeted for. The budgetary process can be livened up by seeing it as more than just ‘a translation of all resources needed into monetary terms’. The priorities are essential for the decision-making of team members. They need to know the order of the priorities which cannot all be equal even if they are all important. Start with a blank sheet of paper and build up the budget from the implementation plan including schedule, risk, leadership and quality plans. Many of the standards emanate from the budgetary process so without a budget it becomes more difficult to deliver projects under some sort of control. Planned individual meetings of one hour will take another 5 hours of the project manager’s time and the same for the team member being met, totalling 10 hours.
