Hi,
It's my understanding that after you're finished assigning estimated Work hours on your tasks, you can make a Baseline before people actually start working on your project.
Then later, when you want to see if you under/over estimated your Work hours, you can compare your current status of the project VS. the old baseline that you saved.
What happens if you plan your project prefectly, save your baseline, and start the work. Then 2 weeks later, out of the blue, some new tasks (demands) must be created.
If you use your old baseline, then you can't see the original estimated work hours on your recently created tasks.
If you save a new baseline, then ALL the originally estimated work hours for the "old" tasks will be lost.
Plus you can only save around 10 baselines. Is it really a useful option?
Thank you, I really appreciate it!!
This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.
Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.
If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.
Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.
Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.
Access the answers to your technology questions today.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.
Try it out and discover for yourself.
30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.
Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.
Hello Gsteingr,
I had presumed that you were working with Project 2003. Assumptions are a dangerous thing.
As Project 2007 is rather new, I would suggest you mention this with your future posts.
In Project 2007 you should simply use the Baseline Work field to get the same results.
Bob Segrest, PMP
Microsoft Project Blackbelt
Hi Gsteingr,
You should still ALWAYS save your project BASELINE when the project plan is approved. There are a lot of neat things it will do for you that other band-aid and work around doing it right solutions are not going to do. You are just getting started, trust me on this one.
For example, it is possible to create a gantt chart that will show both the saved baseline and the current status of your tasks...
When you save our baseline Project copies the Work in your tasks to Baseline Work. But this is NOT the only data saved in the baseline fields.
As a result when a task is added to the project after your baseline is saved, you can still enter the Baseline Work and Project will still be able to differentiate it from tasks saved with the baseline. [I wasn't certain in Project 2007, so I took the time to test this before I responded earlier.]
Another of my PMO training mantras "There is No magic!". Weird and unpredictable results are generally the result of using an application incorrectly or trying to do something in a way the developer didn't have in mind. While bugs are found, these are 0.5% occurrences.
Does this answer your question?
Bob Segrest, PMP
Microsoft Project Blackbelt
Sorry, that I keep asking you. Im taking my final project in school. I had to re-write my previous MS Project document, because my last one was so bad :)
Do you know how to summarize values in a Custom Field? (like f.ex. the Work column does)
http://www.experts-exchang
Thank you so much, bobsegrest.
Business Accounts
Answer for Membership
by: bobsegrestPosted on 2007-02-08 at 06:20:51ID: 18493724
Hello Gsteingr,
The short answer is Yes, and I would go so far as to say baselines are absolutely critical. You must save a baseline or you will not have a reference point for measuring your project progress.
If you add a task, it does not necessarily mean you have to save a new baseline. Instead, just enter the appropriate amount of time into the Planned Work field for the new task. It will not show up in your baseline, but this is appropriate because it was not in the approved plan.
The better answer to your question is really more a matter of project management practices rather than Microsoft Project.
In practice, saving a new baseline should be an extraordinary activity. If it happens more than twice in a project life cycle you should be reassessing your organization's planning methodology. Don't take this the wrong way! I am not saying that changing the baseline often is bad, just that it is an indication that you might be missing something important in the planning process.
Good project management is not just a matter of knowing how your project is performing during execution. It is also a powerful tool for predicting the results far enough in advance for the results to be changed. But the true value to the organization should be the lessons learned documented during project closure.
Initiate, Plan, Execute, Control, Close -- The Project Management Process, PMBOK
Bob Segrest, PMP
Microsoft Project Blackbelt