Budgeting

I'm not really a big fan of budgets.  My wife and I try to make them and then we blow them out of the water within a month.  For projects, however, budgets are important as they lay down some limitations on what can and cannot be done.  Sometimes, however, we don't set the budget properly.  Let me give you an example:

You walk into your bosses office and they tell you that they have a new project for you.  They tell you what the end result of the project is going to be and what your budget for the project is.  The problem is that there has not been any detailed analysis done so the size of the project is totally unknown, but not the budget.

I'm sure that most of you have been there before, even in a somewhat different perspective.  Imagine if you will, going up to your team lead and have them tell you about a new feature you are going to implement -- in one weeks time.

it is important to understand that budget does not necessarily limit itself to dollars as budget can also be equated as people time.  If you have X dollars that equates to Y days of effort. Whether you use the top down approach to budgeting, the bottom up approach or the throw a dart at the dart board approach, you need to understand what you are going to build and how you are going to build it.  Once you figure out that you can come up with an estimate.  Based on that estimate you also include a certain percentage of time for documentation, testing, UAT support, project management, internal technimcal support and deployment time and even post implementation support. 

I know, you normally don't do this.  Maybe that explains why you feel so stressed about being late?