Burn rate

Burn rate is the speed at which a project is using up its budget. On hour-budgeted work, the unit is hours per week or hours per month. On dollar-budgeted work, the unit is dollars over the same window. Either way, the number only becomes useful once it sits next to the planned trajectory, because a high burn rate is fine on a fast project and a low burn rate can still be a problem on a slow one.

Producers usually plot actual burn against an expected curve and watch the gap. A project that has burned 60 percent of its hours at the 40 percent mark of the schedule is on track for an overrun unless something changes. Surfacing burn rate weekly lets the team make small corrections, such as reassigning work, reshaping scope or adding contingency, instead of meeting a much larger problem at delivery.

Related: run rate, project margin, fixed-fee project.