From the course: Project Management Foundations: Schedules

Change the schedule to reduce cost - Microsoft Project Tutorial

From the course: Project Management Foundations: Schedules

Change the schedule to reduce cost

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- [Instructor] If cost is more important than the finish date, there may be ways to change a schedule to reduce the cost. Start by looking for less-expensive resources. The best-case scenario is that they can get the work done in the same amount of time. In that case, the cost definitely goes down. Unfortunately, it's usually the case that less-expensive resources will take longer. For example, a writer who costs $150 per hour takes 20 hours to do the work. Another writer works for $100 an hour. As long as the cheaper writer can do the project in less than 30 hours, you'll save money. Again, this is a balancing act, because often, the cheaper labor will take longer. Another approach is to reduce the cost of overtime by lengthening tasks to eliminate the overtime surcharge. For example, say the writer is scheduled to work 20 hours of overtime to finish an activity on time, and that writer gets paid $20 more per hour for overtime. If you opt to delay the finish date to eliminate overtime, the cost of the activity decreases by $400. On the other hand, shortening the duration might save money if you have a project with high overhead cost, such as leased office space or expensive rented equipment. You might have to experiment with different scenarios to figure out which schedule changes will reduce project costs.

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