You work as a Project Manager for company.com Inc. The executive team has asked you to estimate the labor costs for your project. How will you estimate the labor costs without assigning specific people to the tasks?
A.
You should assign budget resources with corresponding skill sets and costs to tasks.
B.
You should create work resources that will act as placeholders, set their cost rates to an average amount for the corresponding skill set, and assign the work resources to tasks.
C.
You should assign generic resources with corresponding skill sets and costs to tasks.
D.
You should assign costs resources to tasks.
Explanation:
Generic resources designate the skills required for a task, instead of a specific resource. You can estimate labor costs and the project schedule using generic resources, and then later replace the generic resources with actual resources. Generic resources represent skill sets rather than specific people. By assigning generic resources to tasks, a user can estimate how many resources he needs of each skill set for each time period of a project. Later, generic resources can be replaced with specific resources. Answer option B is incorrect. Although you can create additional work resources to act as placeholders, generic resources are preferable, because it is easier to differentiate tasks assigned to real and generic resources.
Answer option A is incorrect. In Project 2010, budget resources correspond to budget line items that you need to track, such as labor, travel, and so on. You assign budgeted values to the budget resources.
Answer option D is incorrect. Cost resources are used to add cost to tasks, but are not related to your project schedule, such as training or travel.