Questions on baselines.

[J Burford Fields]

Hi,

Is there a place where I can get more information on baselining
features of Project Professional 2003 and Project Server 2003?

I've read the administrators guide and three good books on Project
Server, but have not been able to clarify well enough how the various
baseline features work.

What I want to do is to only baseline each phase of a project once it
has been scoped and a work authorization has been issued. We baseline
the initiation phase because we can estimate how long the initiation
phase is going to take. We may not have an accurate idea of what we
want in the final products to be, and what work will be required
beyond the initiation phase, until we complete requirements analysis,
the WBS process, then come back and shake out the priorities. Once we
have a project plan, we want to baseline the next phase.

My preference would be to leave the baseline for the initiation phase
as-is. I want to baseline just the tasks related to the next phase.
The obvious thing, it seems to me, is to select the tasks, use the
"baseline sellected tasks" feature and save them as a new baseline.
Someone else suggests that I should add them to the previous baseline,
but when I approach doing this there is a warning message saying I'm
about to "over-write" the previous baseline.

Backing away from this, I wanted to find some documentation as to how
more than one baseline will work with EVMS (presuming each baseline
encompasses different tasks), but am coming up empty.

Anybody been through this who can shed some light on it?

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

J --

This is an excellent question! You are describing what I like to call a
"rolling Baseline" which captures the Baseline for tasks in each phase after
you completely plan the phase. You should use the following steps to do a
rolling Baseline for each phase of the project when it is completely
planned:

1. Select the tasks in the new phase.
2. Click Tools - Tracking - Save Baseline.
3. Select the "Selected tasks" option.
4. Select the "To all summary tasks" option.
5. Click the OK button.
6. If prompted about overwriting the original Baseline, click the Yes
button.

What this process does is to capture the current Baseline schedule for each
task in the selected section, and then "append" the information to the
Baseline for the Project Summary Task (Row 0). This process works well and
we heartily recommend it to our clients who need it. We completely detail
this process in our new Ultimate Learning Guide to Microsoft Office Project
2007, but it is not detailed in either of our Project Server 2003 books.
Hope this helps.

 

[J Burford Fields]

J --

This is an excellent question! You are describing what I like to call a
"rolling Baseline" which captures the Baseline for tasks in each phase after
you completely plan the phase. You should use the following steps to do a
rolling Baseline for each phase of the project when it is completely
planned:

1. Select the tasks in the new phase.
2. Click Tools - Tracking - Save Baseline.
3. Select the "Selected tasks" option.
4. Select the "To all summary tasks" option.
5. Click the OK button.
6. If prompted about overwriting the original Baseline, click the Yes
button.

What this process does is to capture the current Baseline schedule for each
task in the selected section, and then "append" the information to the
Baseline for the Project Summary Task (Row 0). This process works well and
we heartily recommend it to our clients who need it. We completely detail
this process in our new Ultimate Learning Guide to Microsoft Office Project
2007, but it is not detailed in either of our Project Server 2003 books.
Hope this helps.

--
Dale A. Howard [MVP]
Enterprise Project Trainer/Consultanthttp://www.msprojectexperts.comhttp://www.projectserverexperts.com
"We wrote the book on Project Server"











- Show quoted text -

Yes! Thanks for the confirmation.

At some point I must stand up a 2007 test lab, get your new books, and
have some fun.

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

J --

You are more than welcome, my friend!