TOPIC: Cost versus Budget as a Project constraint

Hi,
For the question on project constraints as shown below, what is the difference between answers B & C? Why is cost right and not budget? Would really appreciate it if someone could clarify this.
Thank you,
Kind regards,
Priya

Yesterday's Answer
Which of the following are the project constraints?

A.) Scope, Schedule, Budget, Personnel, Quality, Risk
B.) Scope, Schedule, Budget, Resources, Quality, Risk
C.) Scope, Schedule, Cost, Resources, Quality, Risk
D.) Scope, Schedule, Cost, Personnel, Quality, Risk

C.) is correct. The competing project constraints that you as the project manager must balance are Scope, Quality, Schedule, Cost, Resources, and Risk.

Can you provide the source for this question?

At a high level I don't like this question at all, and would think it's very unlikely you'd see something like it on the exam. The definition of a constraint is any factor that impacts execution of a project, program or portfolio [PMBOK, 701]. Budget is how much you plan to spend on a specific piece of scope, cost is the actual value incurred by the project. In my mind they're both constraints.

Thank you Kyle for confirming that cost and budget are both constraints. I wasn't sure if I was missing something here. The source of the question is 'PM Prepcast - Question of the day' that I receive everyday by email.
Thank you again for taking the time to respond to this.

Kind regards,
Priya

Hi Priya,

I would tend to prefer answer C over B because - while budget does act as a constraint, indeed - the 'cost' option looks more inclusive to me, if you think about these project constraints in broader terms. Budget sounds too restrictive to me.
As a reference, you may want to refer to the PMBOK Guide on page 542, as well as this article presented at the PMI Global Congress a few years ago, which also discusses how the project constraints moved from the 'classic' Triple constraints (usually illustrated with a triangle image) to these six factors also recalled in your question.

Hope this helps,

Gabriella

Thank you Gabriella, its pretty clear in the PMBOK Guide.
Kind regards,
Priya