Resource Allocation and Budgeting

This week our resources focused on resource allocation and budgeting. Portny et al. (2008) define a project budget as “nothing more than the project plan, based on the Work Breakdown Structure, expressed in monetary terms”. Our task this week was to search the web for resources that would be useful in estimating costs, effort, and/or duration of activities connected with instructional design projects.

One resource that came up during my search is one that I have utilized in previous instructional design courses: Don Clark’s Big Dog & Little Dog’s Performance Juxtaposition website. What I found most helpful on this site were some actual budgeting guidelines from different expert sources that could be plugged into a budget. For example, the eLearning Guild (2002) estimate suggests that to create one hour of simple asynchronous e-learning, 117 hours of development time should be budgeted. This site reminds us that the budget is an estimate and may not be correct the first time, but should be evaluated and adjusted as more information is obtained (Clark, 2010). The link contains many more project details that are useful to begin your cost estimates.

A second site that I found helpful is Freelance Switch and an article by Jennifer Stakes Roberts titled 6 Budget Planning Steps to Professional Project Estimates. This article comes from the perspective of a freelancer and walks the reader step-by-step through creating both top-down estimates and bottom-up estimates. In the top-down approach, the article breaks the estimating down into direct costs and indirect costs. For someone new to budgeting, I like that this article reminds the reader to include those indirect costs such as office costs, equipment, and administrative costs. The author also gives suggestions on questions to ask the client and what to do if your estimate is too high.

A third site that I found helpful as someone studying instructional design and project management was the Microsoft Office Project 2013 site and the section titled 5 steps to prepare your project budget. This area of the Microsoft site goes through the three different types of cost associated with a project: resource rates, fixed costs, and per-use costs. There are also key terms in red that when clicked on give a definition. Embedded within the steps to preparing the project budget are also the steps on creating the budget using Microsoft Office Project. So, for someone like me who is trying Microsoft’s Office Project for the first time this week, this support site is a great resource.

References

Clark, D. (2010). Estimating costs and time in instructional design. Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/costs.html

Microsoft Corporation (2013). 5 steps to prepare your budget. Retrieved from http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/project-help/5-steps-to-prepare-your-project-budget-HA001141182.aspx

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Resource allocation image retrieved from http://www.strategicmanagementbureau.com/home/2013/7/18/are-resource-allocation-decisions-the-key-to-achieving-agili.html

Roberts, J. S. (2013). 6 budget planning steps to professional project estimates. Retrieved from http://freelanceswitch.com/the-business-of-freelancing/plan-project-estimate-budgets/