Jaime --
You are ABSOLUTELY RIGHT that the Baseline must be very useful! In addition
to Rod Gill's sage comments, let me give you an example. After completely
planning your project, you Baseline your project. When you do this, the
software captures the initial planned value for Start date, Finish date,
Duration, Work, and Cost on every task. The software also captures the Work
and Cost for each resource as well. The Baseline even includes the
timephased Work and Cost values for every task and resource assignment,
which you can see in either the Task Usage view or the Resource Usage view.
When you begin entering actual progress in your Microsoft Project plan,
entering information such as Actual Start date, Actual Work, Actual Finish
date, and other information as needed, you can now perform variance analysis
in your project. You really SHOULD do variance analysis at the end of every
reporting period to compare the current project schedule against the
original planned schedule. To do variance analysis, you should consider
doing the following:
1. Click View - Tracking Gantt. This View shows you the schedule variance
in your project. The red and blue Gantt bars show you the current schedule.
The gray Gantt bars show you the original planned schedule. If a red or
blue Gantt bar has slipped to the right of its own gray Gantt bar, then that
task is slipping against your original planned schedule.
2. Next, click View - Table - Variance and the pull the split bar to the
right side of the Finish Variance column. You can view the amount of date
slippage for each task by studying the Start Variance and Finish variance
columns. If you see a positive number in either column, that task is
slipping.
3. Next, click View - Table - Work. This Table shows you the amount of
Work variance in the project. Examine the Work Variance column. If you see
a positive value in that column, your current amount of Work (Actual Work
done to date plus Remaining Work) exceeds your original amount of planned
Work (Baseline Work).
4. Finally, click View - Table - Cost. This Table shows you the Cost
variance. Examine the Cost Variance column. If you see a positive value in
that column, then your current Cost exceeds the planned Cost.
Hope this helps.
