Information Technology Project Management: Providing Measurable Organizational Value, Fourth Edition

CHAPTER 7

The Project Schedule and Budget

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

Chapter 7 focuses on developing the project schedule and budget and introduces a number of project management tools for developing the project plan. After studying this chapter, you should understand and be able to:

• Describe the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®) area called project cost management.
• Develop a Gantt chart.
• Develop a project network diagram using a technique called activity on the node (AON) technique.
• Identify a project's critical path and explain why it must be controlled and managed.
• Develop a PERT diagram.
• Describe the concept of precedence diagramming and identify finish-to-start, start-to-start, finish-to-finish, and start-to-finish activity relationships.
• Describe the concept of critical chain project management (CCPM).
• Describe the various types of costs that make up the project's budget.
• Define what is meant by the baseline project plan.

INTRODUCTION

The last several chapters have been leading up to the development of the project schedule and budget. Chapter 3 introduced the project planning framework (see Figure 7.1). To support this framework, subsequent chapters introduced several Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®) areas, including project integration management, human resources management, project scope management, and project time management. In this chapter, you will ...