The internal costs don’t matter at first, or do they?
We work a lot on cost overviews to give customers an idea of the direction a project will take.
Admittedly, this is very often based on our own experience or on values researched by other customers, partners or even competitors.
One aspect in particular always stands out to us in this – internal costs.
Over and over I hear myself saying: “Here we have also shown the estimated internal costs for you, the project team and also the other future users in a separate tab.”
And over and over the answer is: “Yes, that’s important, but we can leave the internal costs out of it for now…”
Hmm, well.
So here I am sitting again, pulling up the left corner of my mouth into a slight grin, and once again I absolutely cannot leave it as it is.
You always have to be aware of the fact that especially the project team, but also all project participants are already employed by you anyway, but nevertheless will incur other costs in the future.
You have hired the colleagues to spend already 40 hours of your time productively on certain defined topics.
If now suddenly another big aspect such as a CRM project is added, then the salary may remain the same, but the focus will be vehemently shifted.
So what about it?
– Due to the new challenges, you will probably only be able to perform your previous tasks at 50% or even only at 30% of your weekly work time.
– They will have to distribute the work from their previous daily routine in advance and see how this is feasible for the company or even bring in new people.
– They need more idle time in their work day as they move into new areas and topics and need time for research, thinking breaks and more rest breaks in addition to their other pauses.
– You may continue to receive the same salary, but the time spent by those involved will in future run to a different cost center – the project.
Do not burden your colleagues with even more work. Don’t put them under even more pressure.
Make sure you know in advance how you are going to schedule the people for the project and take empirical values for the expected workload of the project.
Based on this, you can also calculate very well how much work each person will invest in the project and what internal costs will ultimately flow into the project.
Salary is salary, 40 hours are 40 hours, but costs are not equal to costs.
Internal costs are also project costs, otherwise you distort your own overall view.
