PMGT1865 Project Time, Cost and Resources

How PMGT1865 is assessed

The six weights come from the University's unit outline for the Semester 2, 2026 offering and are repeated on the unit's own assessment page; they sum to exactly 100 per cent. The hurdle column carries a sentence rather than a flag because the word hurdle appears nowhere in either source, and an absence of a statement is not a published rule either way. Attendance is a published pass condition sitting outside this table: the outline sets a minimum of 85% of timetabled activities, with exceptions granted only by the Dean or the Head of School, and says that failing to meet the minimum attendance requirement may result in a fail grade; the unit's Canvas introduction page states 90% instead, so plan to the stricter figure. Two due dates also differ between sources and both are flagged in the dates table. Confirm all of it, and your own group allocation, on the unit's assessment page.

Current PMGT1865 dates

Dates are as published in the University's published unit outline for the Semester 2, 2026 offering. Confirm exact deadlines and submission settings in the live LMS.

What PMGT1865 covers

PMGT1865 organises itself into three topics, Time, Cost and Resource, taught across ten workshop weeks. This guide follows the teaching order instead, because each method is built out of the one before it: the network needs the work breakdown structure, the passes need the network, the probability work needs the passes, resource levelling needs the float, and earned value needs the time phased budget.

Assessment is six weighted components with no final examination, ending in a two hour quiz sat in the workshop in Week 13.

It teaches the tools and methods project managers use to balance the three quantities in its title: breaking work down, planning to milestones, building and calculating schedules, tracking performance against a baseline, costing the work, calculating a budget, planning the people and plant, and buying in what the team will not build.

The framing throughout is the traditional waterfall tradition, using the Project Management Body of Knowledge as its map, and the unit works through it as a single continuous method rather than as ten separate topics. The unit is unusual for a first year unit in how little of it is recall.

Almost every assessable task hands you a table of activities, durations, estimates or costs and asks you to produce a number, then to say what that number means for a decision about the schedule, the budget or the resource plan.

Four of the eight learning outcomes begin with a verb that produces a quantity: develop a precedence network and determine the critical path, determine the work effort of activities, cost the work and calculate a budget, and work out what a given risk would do to the dates, the spending and the staffing.

Delivery is blended: students read and watch material before class, then attend a two hour workshop each week where the methods are worked on a running case study, with six to eight hours of self study expected alongside. Attendance is a published pass condition that sits outside the assessment table.

The University's unit outline for this offering states that students are expected to attend a minimum of 85% of timetabled activities, that exceptions may be granted only by the Dean or the Head of School, and that failure to meet the minimum attendance requirement may result in a fail grade; it also allows additional assessment items to be set where the attendance requirement differs from 85%.

The unit's own Canvas introduction page instead states a minimum of 90%. Both figures are published by the University and this guide does not choose between them: plan to the stricter one and confirm which applies to your session. Assessment is six weighted components summing to 100 per cent, with no final examination.

Written work submitted late loses five per cent of the maximum mark per calendar day and scores zero after ten calendar days, and applications for special consideration must be submitted within three working days of the due date.

Worked example · free

Reading a critical path, and answering the question behind it

Key terms

Work breakdown structure

A structure that takes everything the project team has to execute and splits it, level by level, into deliverables sitting inside deliverables. It defines scope in operational terms and must capture everything the project plans to do and everything it plans to buy, because the schedule, the budget and the resource plan are all built on top of it.

Float

How long an activity can sit idle before the whole job finishes later than promised. It is computed as late start minus early start once both passes are complete, and an activity with zero float is critical.

Critical path

The connected chain of activities that carry no float, running from the start of the network to the activity that determines the project duration. Delaying any one of them delays the whole project by the same amount.

Link lag

The gap between the early finish of a preceding activity and the early start of the one that follows it. It is measured after the forward pass rather than set in advance, and in an overlapped network the floats are computed from it.

Expected duration

The weighted mean of three estimates, counting the most likely value four times and each extreme once over six shares. It differs from the most likely value whenever the estimates are skewed, which for activity durations is almost always.

Resource levelling

Reshuffling work inside available float so that busy days flatten and quiet days fill. It buys a lower peak with the schedule's remaining slack, so a levelled plan uses its crew efficiently and absorbs future delay poorly.

Responsibility assignment matrix

The intersection of the work breakdown structure and the organisation breakdown structure, defining who is responsible for each item of work. In its RACI form it also records who approves, who contributes and who is kept informed.

Contingency

Funds held for work the project has already agreed to going worse than planned, such as activities running long. It is split into project contingency for known unknowns and management reserve for unknown unknowns, and it is never a funding source for new scope.

Cost baseline

The time phased direct cost of the project, built by allocating each activity's estimated cost to the period in which it occurs. It is the curve that performance is measured against once the work starts.

Earned value

The value of completed work expressed in the budget assigned to it, computed as percent complete multiplied by the budget allocated. It is always priced at planned cost rather than at actual cost, which is what allows a cost variance to exist at all.

PMGT1865 FAQ

Questions students ask in each PMGT1865 chapter

Which phase do students most often leave out when listing the five?

Monitoring and controlling, because it runs alongside execution rather than after it and so does not feel like a stage. It is also the phase this unit finishes on: earned value management is monitoring and controlling expressed as arithmetic. If you can only hold four in your head, make the fifth the one that compares plan against reality while there is still time to act on the difference. Chapter 01 · Project Planning, Life Cycles and Project Scope

Should the top level be organised by phase or by deliverable?

Either, and two other options as well. It does not matter how the top level is structured provided the five rules hold, so phase, deliverable, technical domain, cost account and supplier are all legitimate. Choose the one the people doing the work already think in, because a structure that matches how a team talks gets maintained and one that does not gets abandoned. The only common trap is grouping by time, which duplicates the schedule and cannot carry a budget. Chapter 02 · Building a Work Breakdown Structure

How do I tell a real dependency from a preference?

Ask what physically or contractually stops the second activity starting sooner. If two activities could genuinely run at the same time given the people available, they are parallel, and drawing them in series invents a longer project and hides the real critical path. The most common source of false dependencies is the resource plan: two activities linked because the same person does both is a resource constraint, and it belongs in the levelling chapter rather than in the logic. Chapter 03 · Sequencing Activities into a Precedence Network

What does it mean if the first node's late start does not come back to zero?

One of two things, and both are local. Either a merge or a burst was resolved with the wrong rule, which is the more common cause, or a duration was used inconsistently between the two passes. Stop and find it before filling in any float, because every number after the error inherits it. Recheck every node with more than one arrow first, then compare the durations cell by cell against the source table. Chapter 04 · Forward Pass, Backward Pass and the Critical Path

Which format should I hand to which reader?

Match it to the decision they are about to make. A sponsor at a stage gate needs a milestone chart, because the question is whether to release the next tranche. A work package owner needs a bar chart filtered to their branch, because the question is what to do this fortnight. A planner assessing a change needs the network with float, because that question is about slack and slack lives in the logic. A marker or an auditor needs the table, because that is the only form in which every number can be traced to the one before it. Chapter 05 · Schedule Formats, Gantt Charts and Planning Software

What is the difference between lead time and link lag?

One is an input and one is an output. Lead or lag time is the offset a planner writes on the link before any pass, either because the work forces a wait or because the successor is being deliberately delayed. Link lag is computed afterwards from the calculated dates, as the successor's early start minus the predecessor's early finish. They can carry the same value on a simple chain, which is exactly why they get confused. Label the diagram so a reader can tell which is which. Chapter 06 · Overlapping Relationships and Link Lag

Why can I not just use late start minus early start here?

Because that subtraction is correct in a pure finish to start network and stops being equivalent as soon as a link attaches to a start rather than a finish. In an overlapped schedule float is built from lags, and the two approaches diverge. Using the familiar subtraction on an overlapped network is the single most common way this question is answered confidently and wrongly, because it produces numbers that look reasonable and are not. Chapter 07 · Float and the Critical Path in Overlapped Schedules

Why is the most likely value multiplied by four?

Because the formula is a weighted average over six shares in which the middle estimate carries most of the information and the two extremes still pull the answer towards whichever side has the longer tail. On a symmetric set of estimates the formula returns the most likely value exactly; on a skewed set it returns something between the most likely and the pessimistic value, which is the behaviour you want when work can run late by more than it can run early. Chapter 08 · Three Point Estimating and Expected Duration

What happens if I add the standard deviations instead of the variances?

The spread roughly doubles and every probability is dragged towards fifty per cent. In the worked example the five deviations sum to 4.167 while the correct project deviation is 2.193, barely half of that. It is the single most expensive error in this material because it produces a number that looks entirely reasonable, and the only defence is the habit of squaring first, adding second and taking the root last. Chapter 09 · Probability of Completion and Target Dates

Which estimating method should I use?

Whichever the information you hold supports, since the methods are not ranked. Parametric needs a productivity rate. Analogous needs a genuinely comparable past project. Bottom-up needs a complete decomposed breakdown. Vendor bid analysis needs a market and historical data needs records. If you have none of those, expert judgement or a structured process such as Delphi is not a cop out but the only honest option, and saying so is a stronger answer than inventing a rate you cannot source. Chapter 10 · Estimating Project Resources

Why is the utilisation factor computed before the move rather than only after it?

Because the method uses it to evaluate alternatives rather than to report a result. A histogram can look better after a rearrangement and be worse: spreading a spike across two extra days at a slightly higher baseline raises the average without lowering the peak, and the peak is what determines the crew you have to carry. The factor forces both numbers into a single figure, which is why step six sits between plotting the histogram and moving anything. Chapter 11 · Resource Levelling, Smoothing and Utilisation

Why can there only be one accountable entry per row?

Because accountability is the right to approve, and two people who can both approve means neither has to. The sign off can then be claimed by either and owned by neither, which is precisely the situation the letter exists to prevent. If a row genuinely needs two approvals, the work package is really two packages, and the fix belongs back in the decomposition rather than in the matrix. Chapter 12 · Roles, Responsibilities and the RACI Matrix

Can contingency be used to fund extra scope?

No, and this is the substantive judgement question in the topic. Contingency covers work the project already agreed to going worse than expected, such as activities running longer or issues arising. New scope is a change and is funded as one, with its own approval. Spending contingency on new work quietly removes the cover for risks that have not yet been retired, and it does so invisibly, because the total looks unchanged right up until the moment the retained risk actually occurs. Chapter 13 · Cost Estimation and the Project Cost Estimate

Why do the two allocation rules contradict each other?

Because they track different things. Labour is spread across the periods the activity occupies, since that is when the effort happens. Materials are lumped into the period of receipt, even if the activity consuming them runs for weeks afterwards, because that is when the commitment lands. Applying the proportional rule to a delivery is the commonest way a phased budget comes out smooth and wrong, since it hides the single largest step in the curve. Chapter 14 · Time Phased Budgets and Cash Flow

Why is over specification a legal problem rather than just an inefficiency?

Because it narrows what you are lawfully able to accept. The golden rule is to describe the need rather than over specify the solution: if you tender for one thing you may not accept an offer for something else, or even for that thing plus extras. Competition only produces better answers if suppliers are free to propose them, so describing the outcome and the constraints leaves the market room while describing the solution reduces it to whoever can build your drawing. Chapter 15 · Procurement Planning and Contract Types

Why is earned value priced at budget rather than at what the work actually cost?

Because pricing it at actual cost would make earned value and actual cost identical, every cost variance would be zero, and the method would report that no project has ever overrun. Valuing completed work at what you said it would cost is what creates the gap that a cost variance measures. It is the least intuitive idea in the topic and the one everything else depends on. Chapter 16 · Earned Value Measurement and Forecasting

How to prepare for the assessments

Treat this unit as one continuous method rather than ten topics, and carry a single project of your own invention through all of it. Ten or so activities is enough.

Draw its work breakdown structure, sequence it into a network, pass it forwards and backwards, put an overlapping relationship on two of its links and recompute, replace the durations with three point estimates, level one resource across it, price it, phase the budget across three periods, and then report it at the halfway point with earned value.

Every join between chapters becomes visible when the same project has to survive all of them, and the joins are where the assessment questions live.

Work the arithmetic by hand and never by reading, because the errors this unit punishes are procedural: a merge resolved with the lowest rather than the highest early finish, an efficiency factor multiplied instead of divided, standard deviations added instead of variances, a subtraction reversed in an earned value calculation. Each of those produces a plausible number, which is the expensive kind of mistake.

Build the habit of running the checks the methods already give you: the backward pass must return the first node to zero, the durations along the critical path must sum to the project duration, the phased budget periods must reconcile to the cost baseline. Each takes seconds and each converts a wrong answer into a corrected one.

Keep one page of the unit's own numbers, since the weightings, the late penalty, the three working day window for special consideration, the five accuracy classes and the RACI letters are what make an answer specific rather than generic. Finally, practise the second half of every question.

Almost every task here is a calculation followed by an interpretation, and the interpretation carries roughly a third of the marks: say what the number tells a project manager to do differently, and name what the method cannot see.

When something will not stick, ask Sia to explain it a different way and to set you a fresh version of the same calculation to work; it teaches the method and checks your reasoning, and it never substitutes for your own graded work. Confirm your semester's dates and weightings on the unit's own pages in your first week.

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