View the project costs   You can view the totals, the costs over time, or the costs in a chart. Doing this can help you to see whether you are meeting your targeted budget and whether you need to adjust your costs.

• View project costs

Optimize the plan to decrease the costs   If you determine that the planned costs do not meet your targeted budget, you can use several strategies to cut costs.

•  Adjust the resources and costs to meet the budget

  Click all of the following that apply:

  • Enter costs for resources to adjust the regular and overtime rates, per-use costs, fixed costs, or cost resources.
  • Remove or replace a resource assignment to cut costs by replacing a more expensive resource (a person, equipment, material, or cost) with a less expensive one, or to reduce the number of comparable resources on a single task. Sometimes, using less expensive resources results in corresponding trade-offs of decreased scope, longer schedule, or lower quality. Still, this is one of the most realistic strategies for optimizing the costs. If you remove a more expensive resource from the assignment (assignment: A specific resource that is assigned to a particular task.), this resource is free to work on other tasks or projects that are more cost-effective.
  • Reassign the remaining work on a task to control which of several resources does what portion of the remaining work, or to specify exactly when the remaining work will be done.

•  Reduce the project scope to meet the budget

  Do all of the following that apply:

  •  Determine whether to change the deliverable or the scope

    You might need to reduce the scope to meet the finish date or the budget. Or, after building your project plan, you might find that you have more time or money than you expected. In either case, you can change the scope of the project. You can choose between changing the deliverables (deliverable: A tangible and measurable result, outcome, or item that must be produced to complete a project or part of a project. Typically, the project team and project stakeholders agree on project deliverables before the project begins.) of the product or changing the scope of the project.

    • Cut the product deliverables   If you reduce the scope by cutting product deliverables, you are actually providing less to the customers or stakeholders than you planned. For example, suppose you are working on a project to develop a new product. To meet the finish date or budget, you decide to cut product features that were originally planned and approved by the customers. In this case, you probably need to obtain customer approval, and you may need to adjust the contract, if applicable.
    • Cut the project scope   You may be able to provide the same product deliverables by changing the way that you produce them.

      For example, on the project to develop a new product, you decide to remove a market research task, and you also reduce the duration of the product testing in order to meet the finish date or budget. In this case, the end product and deliverables don't change. However, you changed the method for providing this end product by reducing the scope of the project.

    • Use the available time or budget   If you find that you have more time or money than you expected, you can add deliverables. Or you can increase the scope of the project itself, which often results in a higher-quality product.
    • Consider the impact of the scope on quality   You might need to reduce the scope to meet the finish date or the budget. Or, after building your project plan, you might find that you have more time or money than you expected. In either case, you can change the scope of the project. Consider that quality and scope are closely related. If you cut the scope, you might have to accept a reduced level of quality. If you increase the scope, you probably will increase the quality of the project and the resulting product.
  • Change a duration to reduce the amount of time that is planned for tasks. Make sure that the reduced duration still allows the work to be completed. Also be sure to adjust the corresponding amount of work that is assigned to the resources.
  • Remove a task if it is not absolutely necessary. But be aware that removing tasks can decrease the quality of the overall project implementation. Tasks that must be done should still be reflected in the plan, and only those tasks that are considered optional should be removed.
  • Replace a resource assignment by replacing a more expensive resource (a person, equipment, or materials) with a less expensive one. Sometimes, using less expensive resources results in corresponding trade-offs of decreased scope, longer schedule, or decreased quality. Still, this is one of the most realistic strategies for optimizing costs.

Adjust the plan to take advantage of additional budget   After you build your plan, you might find that you have more budget available. You can choose to bring the project in under budget. Or you can increase the scope and the quality goals for the project.

Enter a note about the cost changes   Log information about the changes that you made to meet the budget. Such notes can be helpful when you are tracking actual progress, closing the project, or collecting data for the next project.

• Add a note to a task, resource, or project

Evaluate the results of cost optimization   Verify that you did indeed lower the costs, and that the finish date, workload, and other projects are not adversely affected by these changes.

Click all of the following that apply:

• View project costs to see whether you lowered the costs and how close you are to meeting your targeted budget.
• Show the critical path to see how the changes that you made to optimize the costs affected the critical path. You might see different dates, different tasks, and different resources associated with the critical path.
• Review resource workloads to see whether any assigned resources are now overloaded or underutilized as a result of your cost-optimization efforts.
• Check impact on other projects to ensure that any changes are updated in other project files that are linked to or consolidated (consolidated project: A project containing one or more inserted projects [also known as subprojects]. These can retain links to their source projects and may be linked to one another. A consolidated project is also called a master project.) in your project.

Communicate the assignment changes to the resources   If you assigned new tasks to the resources or changed or removed any existing assignments, you need to publish these changes for the affected resources.

• Publish the latest plan and team assignments in order to communicate the assignment changes.