Welcome to Financial Principles and Project Cost Management! Below are the files and the YouTube videos you need for the course. We are using a "flipped classroom" format for this course. You will learn the key concepts for each week through a video before the lecture, and our class time will be spent analyzing finance and cost management scenarios in teams. You should watch the weekly video (see "Useful links" below) and read the related case study BEFORE the lecture in order to be prepared for our case analysis during class.

Beyond providing important finance and cost management concepts, this course will teach you to analyze project management scenarios in a team setting using critical thinking skills, which will enable you to successfully manage and lead an organization.

I look forward to working with you!

Regards, Thomas

COURSE FILES
Financial Principles and Project Cost Management syllabus

Lecture 1
PCM lecture 1 PPT
PCM lecture 1 SOLUTIONS PPT
In lecture 1 we will learn about how to use financial accounting to prepare financial statements. The first two "lecture 1" videos from Aplos Software, LLC in the "Useful links" section (each video is about five minutes) are a great introduction to financial accounting. Lecture 1 videos 3 and 4 are beyond the scope of our course, but are available if you want to go a bit deeper into accounting concepts.

Lectures 2 and 3
PCM lecture 2 PPT
PCM lecture 2 SOLUTIONS PPT
Sample flexible budget in Excel
CVP analysis in Excel
Lectures 2 and 3 are about managerial accounting. While financial accounting is for external users (donors, investors, and lenders), managerial accounting is for internal users (management). We will learn how to use two great tools - cost/volume/profit analysis and flexible budgets.

Lectures 4 and 5
Budget planning exercise: work breakdown structure
Earned value analysis PPT
Gaziantep education project budget DRAFT
Gaziantep education project budget earned value analysis
Sample EVA analysis
Lectures 4 and 5 are about the mechanics of budgeting. We will work with project management concepts (work breakdown structures, cost estimates, and budgets) we learned about in Project Management Fundamentals, now with a larger scope (multi-million dollar) project. We will also learn about "earned value analysis", a PMD Pro concept which analyzes budget activity based on actual project progress rather than a static project timeline. I will assign project work packages to the class teams, each team will develop a budget for its work package, then we will consolidate the work package budgets into a program budget.

Lecture 6
Gaziantep education project EVA activity
Gaziantep education project EVA variance analysis
During lecture 6 we will apply earned value analysis to our project budget and use variance analysis to analyze our budget to date ("earned value") vs. actual results, interpret variances to understand what our analysis is telling us, and decide what actions (if any) we should take.

Lecture 7
Gaziantep education project budget report
During lecture 7 we will summarize our project budget into a budget report to be delivered to the donor, classified by function (project activity or administrative activity).

Lecture 8
Work on course project

Lecture 9
PCM final exam review