Let's use the example of a $10M project - small to typical by today's standards.

It is frighteningly easy for a small project like this to go over budget by 50% in as little as six months. True hourly cost of a resource is rarely understood. Base salaries, benefits and bonuses of each employee may be well documented, but frequently forgotten are equipment cost and maintenance, travel and meeting expense, facility expense, time value of money (discounted future earnings), training time, opportunity cost, management expense, overtime, personal and vacation time, sick days and scheduling conflicts.

There are lots of reasons a project can go off the rails: weak or non-technical leadership, disorganization, competing projects, lack of understanding of the true goal or technology challenges, evolving tech, loss of key resources, in-fighting or out of control egos, poor negotiation, lack of communication, moving targets, competitive pressures, etc.

Sound familiar?

Let's do the math.

50% of $10M is, yep, you got it, $5M! Now, imagine that you could save that 50% over run by spending only 1% and at the same time you could be quicker to market, have happier teams and employees, manage risk, scope creep, integration, stakeholders and customer expectations.

That is the value solid Project Management can offer your organization. A skilled PM is able to win over teams and resources to the common goal, to organize budgets and time lines, identify critical path deliverables and dependencies, bring superior negotiation and people skills to bear, and remove roadblocks to success.

A good PM is also able to communicate across all levels of an organization persuading stakeholders to focus resources and setting internal and external client expectations.

Your next big idea can become a reality and bringing it home ahead of schedule and under budget is possible IF you have a good leader at the helm with the skills and experience to do the job right.