Did you hear about the project that had more money than they could spend? Well, it isn’t quite as simple as that but close. The first phase of the project had problems, went over budget and was delayed but it made an amazing comeback. By the end of the first year, the new system was wildly successful despite some of its short comings, it was decided that there should be a second phase with more functionality.
This is where things get a bit sticky. It is quite reasonable to create some sort of a specification/road-map so we have a plan on what to work on, which is exactly what project Zinger did. Yet due insufficient internal sources and scheduling conflicts instead of getting this finished early in the year it wasn’t finished until the end of June.
The project cannot take this money and start until they have a plan and thus only 100k of the planned 550k was used by June. The project is behind and it is unlikely that they will be using much of the 700k that will be available for the second half of the year. Under normal circumstances you would think that not “pissing” away a lot of money when you are not prepared is a good idea. However, the normal budget rule will take precedence
“Use it or lose it”
Next year when the money is needed to finish up what was started it is almost certain that the budget committee will see that they needed considerably less than originally planned amount for this year and will cut accordingly.