Project Burn Rate: Definition, Importance and Tracking Tips

As a explainer video company we produce many projects, including the most nonstandard and challenging. And here budget and deadline management are important requirements for good project management. One of the options for your project’s efficiency will be to calculate its burn-in rate, which is the rate at which your team uses resources, such as time and budget, to achieve project goals as we do. Let’s check what is a burn rate.

What is the project burn rate?

What is the burn rate? Thus, the burn rate definition is a metric for project management that calculates how effectively a team manages its time and budget while working towards achieving its goals. Calculating a project’s burn-in rate allows project managers to determine how well a team is meeting deadlines and budget constraints.

Why is project burn rate important?

Learning about burnout and how to measure this metric can help you keep track of how well your team is working to achieve project goals. In this article, we’ll explain what project burnout is, why it’s important, and give you some tips to help you keep track of your project’s burnout rate.

How to Calculate the Burn Rate

How to calculate burn rate? Proposed Burn Rate (PBR) = BPHS/BPCS or the Budgeted Person Hours Scheduled divided by the Budgeted Percentage of Completion Scheduled. Also, you may calculate your project’s burn rates as per the burn rate formula where there is Actual Cost (AC) divided by Earned Value (EV) or: AC / EV.

Burn Rate Example

For example, in case the team is using the project’s budget excessively than anticipated, the project manager can estimate the project’s financial resources. They may reallocate funds to better cover current expenses, find ways to cut costs, look for revenue opportunities, or adjust their production targets to stay within budget.

How to Interpret the Burn Rate

If the project burnout score shows that the team is successfully managing their time and financial resources, then this is a positive sign that the project plan is effective and in line with the team’s capabilities. In contrast, if the burnout rate shows that the team is depleting its resources faster than expected, this allows the project manager to rethink the plan and make adjustments.

What is a good burn rate?

Well, most entrepreneurs and experts recommend having at least twelve months of tracking runway at all times. That means calculating burn rate which is a good one will be around one-twelfth of your available cash. So what is a good burn rate? If you have $600,000 in available cash, for instance, a burn rate close to $50,000 would be quite good.

4 Tips for tracking project burn rate

Here you will find some tips to help you control your project’s burn rate and improve the team’s performance:

1. Consider project priorities

How you use project burnout depends on the goals and priorities of your project. For some projects, it is quite important to focus on tracking hourly or daily performance, while for others it may be more important to manage the budget.

2. Optimize your work

For larger or more complex video projects, you may use project management software to help you keep track of project progress. Various project management tools offer a wide range of options for planning, tracking and presenting data related to company projects and increasing productivity.

3. Set up regular assessments

It is typical for a project manager to plan and conduct regular burnout assessments. They determine how often to monitor their performance data based on the needs and goals of the project. For example, some project managers used to prefer to track their project burn data on a daily basis.

4. Consider project priorities

When you determine how often to evaluate your team project’s burn-in rate, consider your project’s goals and needs. While burnout rates can be a great metric to understand how well your project is meeting its budget and staffing goals, there may be other ways to manage these factors on some peculiar projects.

Conclusion

The definition of burn rate is quite useful for everyone. When we’re running a project for a client, we can review our energy usage data to gauge performance. When project managers know the progress of their project, they can make more informed decisions about it in the future; find better solutions or staff, etc. By knowing the priorities and the purpose of collecting burnout data, you can better apply them to your project plan. You may consult about whether to plan to study this indicator or not with your marketing animation video projects and how often prefer to receive updates and reports on project burn rate any time.