Project manager costs in budget

[bingoBlob]

I'm a relatively new PM and was wondering, how (and if?) you calculate/track project management costs as part of the project budget? Also, is it common practice to include PM costs in estimating project budgets, or is everything estimated but the PM costs? It seems you won't get the true cost of the project, by doing that.

As with any project there will be specific deliverables/tasks you assign the PM and others to, and costs are easy to track based on work. What about those times where you're only monitoring the project, where there is no actual deliverable for a PM? Should I have a 'monitoring' task that spans the whole project?

I'd appreciate it if anyone can shed some light on this subject.
Thanks!

 

[JimmyTheFish]

It's not true to say that you have few deliverables. Simply monitoring the project should result in you updating your plan (deliverable being the up-to-date plan).

The amount of time allocated to a PM will vary depending on the nature and environmentals of the project.

If the resources are in geographically different locations it will take significantly more PM time to do the monitoring - ensuring dependencies are managed properly and then escalated will take up a significant amount of time. If they are all in the same place, then it's a little easier and will take less time.

If the project scope is not well defined, then you are likely, as a PM, to require additional time managing change to the plan.

If you are working in a more formal environment you will almost certainly require more PM time in producing the progress reporting of your client, whereas in a less formal environment it may be OK to report on an exception basis.

Reviewing risks and issues - again a deliverable is the updated risk and issue log. Again, this is something that will take more or less of your time depending on the other factors I've mentioned above.

So, to sum up, whilst you might not have many external deliverables, there are many internal project deliverables that it will be your job as a PM to create, maintain and report upon. As you have suggested, not putting estimates for this time into the project understatest the overall cost estimates for the project. Clearly they need to be included. As a rule of thumb, I generally take around 25% of the build effort and put that down as PM effort spread accross the project. However, it could be significantly more if any of the circumstances above are in play.

Just my 2 cents!

 

[BNPMike]

Typically you put in a task that covers the time you are on the project. It's optional though, and rather depends on whether the plan is serving other purposes eg tracking costs and resource utilisation.