Project Baselines

Overview

The basic principle of baselining is to capture, at various points, predictions and forecasts about schedule, costs, level of effort, and results and benefits for some or all projects in the portfolio.

The plan captured at one of those points can be considered the “contract” or plan of record (POR) among executives, functional management, and the project team as to funding and resources supplied and the outcome to be expected.

The comprehensive historical data set enables analysis of process compliance and of project and organization performance against plans. This provides the basis for continuous process improvement.

Rights Required for Baselines

The user must have either the Baseline  or Official Baseline right and project node edit rights (P2 or above), or project manager rights (P1) to the target project(s) in order to capture baselines.

In most cases, baseline rights should be reserved for portfolio managers and portfolio administrators. Baselining is a critical element in the management and oversight of operations. Baseline naming conventions, frequency, and scope are typically outside the realm of the project manager’s responsibility.

What happens when a baseline is captured

When a project baseline is captured, all specified values are copied from the database source tables to a separate set of baseline tables in the database. This means that ALL specified data related to the project, previously saved to the database, is captured, not just the data loaded in the current session.

The records/values optionally captured in a project baseline are:

All fields available on the Project Data page and all phase and milestone dates
All Labor assignments  (Skill and Resource)
All Financial assignments
All Asset assignments
All period values or only those values for a specified timespan

Labor and financial demand forecast data on assignments are captured from first to last demand value unless Baseline From or Baseline End have values.

There are two checkboxes on the Create Baseline dialog that together determine the kind of baseline to be created: Private and Official. They define three (not four) kinds of baselines: Public-Unofficial, Private-Unofficial, Public-Official. (Private-Official is disabled.)

[Important Note: For Unofficial baseline assignments, only period data values are captured. Assignment field values such as Effort State and UDFs are NOT captured. Those fields ARE captured in Official baselines.]

The following baseline attributes are associated with all baselines:

a user specified baseline name
baseline submit date
user name of the submitter

Considerations in Specifying a Baseline Date Range

If the baseline date fields are empty, forecast demand is captured for all periods, past periods as well as future periods.

Assuming that best practice is to never change a forecast in past periods, you can minimize the amount of data captured by setting the Baseline From date to the beginning of the current period and leave the Baseline To date empty on every baseline capture except the first one.

The first baseline on a project should be done with both date fields empty in order to capture all forecast demand including past periods.

Baseline vs. Official Baseline Rights

At creation, baselines must be declared “official” or “not official”. The “current” baseline is defined in ResourceFirst as the most recent official baseline. When the baseline assignment page value is displayed, the period values are the current baseline.

The baselines shown on the Status History page are the Project Data values at the time an Official Baseline was captured. This means that the Status History page shows historical as well as current Project Data field values.

All baselines, public and private, official and unofficial, can be displayed in reports subject to access permissions.

Displaying Baselines on Labor Assignment Pages (the Current Baseline)

The current baseline (on assignment pages) is the most recent Official baseline in every period, regardless of baseline name or type. Private baselines are NOT displayed on assignment pages.

ALL baselines are available in QlikView or QlikSense reports.

How To

Step 0: Go to the Project Data page in Grid mode.

Step 1: Select the checkbox at the left of the row for projects to be baselined.

To baseline all projects, e.g. for a monthly historical baseline or for the yearly AOP Plan of Record, select the column title row selection checkbox at the top left of the table.

Step 2: Click the Baseline, Status, Scenario & Template icon.

Step 3: Click the Create Baseline menu item. (In Project Data Detail mode, this menu has fewer items.)

In Project>Data-Grid Mode                                                In Project>Data-Detail Mode

Step 4: Fill out the Baseline dialog and click the Baseline button.

Enter a meaningful baseline name, e.g. “Design Phase”.

Select a baseline type from the Baseline Type drop down.

Check Private if you want to restrict access to the baseline.

If Private is unchecked, the baseline is “public”, meaning anyone who has rights can see the contents.

Check Official if this is a formal baseline to be all or part of the current baseline for the selected projects.

(Optional) Specify the period range for labor and financial assignments. If empty, values from all periods are captured.

Specify the record types to be captured in the baseline.

Forecast – labor assignments, skill and named resource
Financials – financial and asset assignments
Status, Phases, Milestones – all project fields and phase/milestone dates and completion state
Baseline Project Hierarchy – capture the entire branch from the selected project down.