As a Manpower and Force Management Professional, why Intro to Budgeting Concepts?

REDSTONE ARSENAL, AL, UNITED STATES

11.07.2017

Courtesy Story

U.S. Army Career Program 26

**By: Stephen Winston, Management Analyst, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama**

Imagine my surprise when I received encouragement from the CP26 Proponency Office to consider the option of taking Introduction to Budgeting Concepts (IBC). I must admit that I wondered about what benefits were to be gained to me as a CP26 careerist. After all, I had only a cursory experience working in budgeting from an earlier time in my career. However, in an effort to be open-minded, I decided to embrace it as an opportunity to enhance my skill set.

This was an eight day course held at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. It focused on fostering an understanding of the link between strategy, programs and budget, and the main difficulties in implementing resource allocation decisions linked to strategy. I was pleasantly surprised to find myself gaining greater familiarity with program budget concepts that support sound resource management principles in defense, such as: program structures, multi-year budgets and analysis. There were a number of case studies presented to expose analysts to actions and outputs required for successfully formulating, executing and evaluating budgets intended to accomplish higher-level goals and objectives.

The instructors, along with students from varied allied nations made for an extremely diverse group offering very informed discussions on budgeting, best practices and concepts. I was challenged to find trade offs among competing goals, identify the opportunity cost of resource constrained decisions, and examine budgetary uncertainty and risk. Personally, I feel that having the opportunity to participate in these discussions and listen to the different perspectives on internal controls added to the cohesiveness of the class.

My goal in attending this class was to gain analytical tools and concepts which I could apply to my manpower and organizational management role back home at Redstone Arsenal. I am happy to say that this course has helped to broaden my thinking over and above my daily tasks, and will aid in my continuous effort to find better ways to clarify and communicate information. Finally I would like to encourage all CP26 careerist to take advantage of future training opportunities.

• Date Taken: 11.07.2017
• Date Posted: 11.15.2017 09:43
• Story ID: 254396
• Location: REDSTONE ARSENAL, AL, US
• Hometown: HUNTSVILLE, AL, US
• Hometown: MONTEREY, CA, US
• Hometown: REDSTONE ARSENAL, AL, US