Budget Development and Financial Accountability Questions

Covers end to end practices for developing, managing, and being accountable for project and organizational budgets and for controlling costs to protect financial performance. Candidates should be able to explain how to build a formal budget by defining cost categories and assumptions, gathering and validating cost data, selecting estimation techniques such as bottom up and analogous estimating, setting contingency reserves, and allocating budget to milestones and workstreams. They should describe forecasting approaches, periodic reforecasting, variance analysis, and earned value management including planned value, earned value, and cost and schedule variances, as well as how to detect and escalate cost overruns. Discussion should include capital versus operating expense treatment, resource and labor cost management, procurement and vendor cost considerations, approval and governance processes, internal controls for fiscal discipline, and strategies for cost recovery or protecting project profitability. Candidates should also demonstrate how they report and communicate budget status and variances to stakeholders and leadership and how they balance trade offs between budget, scope, schedule, and quality. Emphasis is on processes, governance, communication, and accountability rather than any single software tool.