Question on Saving Baselines

[Jerry Arnone, PMP]

Although I have allot of PM experience I have not had to do allot of the
scheduling and maintaining the actual project plans so I have a couple of
questions regarding baselines.

I understand the concept of baselines and what they are for. Lets say I am
going to make some major schedule changes after I have the set the first
baseline. I know to copy the Baseline into Baseline1 by using “Save interim
planâ€. I then make the changes to my schedule (lets say I added 4 tasks and
changed the dates on a couple of tasks) for example. So I then save the
baseline again after I made changes by selecting “save baseline†& “selected
tasks†Should I save those changes to the Baseline or Baseline1 plan?

--

 

[JackD]

Since you have the option of 11 baselines in project 2002 and later, you
would simply save the new baseline into any unused baseline field. This way
you can compare against your original plan and your revised plan.

Copying a baseline into an interim plan results in a loss of information.
Interim plans contain very limited information. Baselines contain timescaled
data that is important if you are going to make serious comparisons.

 

[Jerry Arnone, PMP]

So dont you have to use the "save interim plan" option to copy the baseline
into baseline1? And after you make the changes do you save to baseline or
baseline1?

 

[JackD]

Leave the original baseline where it is. Save the new one to whichever one
is not used or whichever you have decided you can overwrite (if you already
have used them all up).

"Save interim plan" only saves start and finish dates for the tasks, no
costs, work, etc. I consider an "interim plan" useless as a baseline. Forget
about using it.

 

[Jerry Arnone, PMP]

Jack,
thanks! it makes allot more sense now. I am using a study book from IIL and
they are not clear on allot of the "real" facts.
thanks again!!!

 

[Jerry Arnone, PMP]

One other question. Once you have save the new baseline say to Baseline1,
how do you set baseline1 to be used for cost reports, resource usage..etc...?

 

[JackD]

Tools menu/options/calculations tab/earned value then select the appropriate
baseline.

Older versions of project did not have multiple baselines so if you are
working off old material it may still mention interim plans.

 

[Rick]

In this situation it appears that Finish Variance is still calculated off of
the original baseline. There does not appear to be a corresponding "Finish
Variance 1". Is there another method for having the Finish Variance
calculate off of a different Baseline?

 

[JackD]

Hmmm... so it does. Not what I expected. You can create a finish variance 1
using a custom field however.
See this page for some information about working with calculated fields.
http://masamiki.com/project/customfieldFAQ.htm

 

[Gary L. Chefetz \(MVP\)]

Rick:

If you know that you want to roll variance over with a baseline change, save
your first baseline to Baseline and Baseline 11. Start your archive
countdown that way.

--

Gary L. Chefetz, MVP
"We wrote the books on Project Server"
http://www.msprojectexperts.com

-

 

[Melissa Tan]

My project has moving targets (unfortunately) so I really want to track
variances between actual dates and the various base dates. Are you saying I
have to "Save As" my file and track the variances in different files rather
than in 1 file? If so, what is the advantage of saving different baselines
in 1 file?