Keep in mind that in this course we are teaching the ideals of project management in a medical field. This is the best it could ever be, and more than that, this type of project management we are learning here in this course is for large medical device projects that have never been done before. If you are just changing the label on a box, you may not need to go through all of this. On the other hand, if you are making an electrically stimulated spine fusion scaffold that releases drugs and has a specially patterned surface for cell growth, you will need a lot of this stuff.

One of the biggest obstacles to “ideal project management” you will see is the organization itself. For example, how can you calculate schedule variance when you don’t know your actual cost? I have worked for companies in the past where we have absolutely no idea how much money we were spending because the Project Manager didn’t have access to any financial data!

Don’t be surprised if that happens to you. Too often, companies go crazy over numbers during “budget time” which usually occurs about 3 to 6 months before the end of the current fiscal year. Then after the budgets are submitted, they forget about them as far as changing them goes.

Have you ever been in a situation where a brand new project starts during a year and you have no ability to get money for it because the budgets were already “set” 4 months ago? That happens all the time. If you had this experience, share it.

How else can not knowing your budget affect a project?