Interim plans

[Jpstewar]

I am trying to better understand saving an interim plan. The question: Once I
save an interim plan, where does it go? It doesn't appear to be saved as a
separate file. If I read the M'soft help, it appears that the only way I can
see it is to insert the Start1 and Finish1 columns in my project. True? Also,
what's the advantage of having this functionality?

 

[Andrew Lavinsky]

The interim plan feature basically saves the current estimated Start/Finish
fields to Start1/Finish1, and so on and so forth. The goal is to do impact
analysis. For instance, before accepting updates for this week, I may take
an interim plan. Then I accept updates, then I review the changes from my
interim plan to my revised calculations.

If I am importing a project to the Server environment, changing resources,
or changing calendars, I would take an interim plan to assess the impact
of those changes.

Finally, interim plans play a key role in baseline change impact analysis.
When new scope is approved, we add an interim plan. Then we add the new
tasks. This allows us to assess which tasks have been changed by the addition,
and then to edit the baseline selectively for only the impacted tasks.

- Andrew Lavinsky
Blog: http://blogs.catapultsystems.com/epm