276 Part 4: Updating and Managing the Schedule
Assigning Baselines to Projects
Use the Assign Baselines dialog box to designate the current project or an existing baseline as the project, primary, secondary, or tertiary baseline. The project baseline is always used to summarize a project. The project baseline or primary baseline can be designated as the project to use when calculating earned value (based on a setting in the Settings tab of Project Details). The primary, secondary, and tertiary baselines are user-defined baselines used to compare projects.
Assign the baseline to use for summarization or earned value
To choose which baseline to use for summarizing a project, open the project for which you want to select a project baseline. Choose Project, Assign Baselines. In the Project field, select the project to which you want to assign a project baseline. In the Project Baseline field, select the desired baseline or the current project. If no baseline is designated as active, the current project is used as the baseline project.
You can assign only one project baseline to a project. You must have the appropriate security privileges to select the project baseline.
Assign the baselines to use for the current project Use the Assign Baselines dialog box to choose which baseline is the primary baseline for a project. Open the projects for which you want to select a baseline. Choose Project, Assign Baselines. In the Project field, select the project to which you want to assign a primary baseline.
Each baseline field in the Assign Baselines dialog lists the current project and all existing baselines for the selected project. To use an existing baseline as the primary baseline, select an existing baseline in the Primary field. If you do not select a value for the primary baseline, the current project is used as the primary baseline.
Assign baselines for comparison To assign an existing baseline as the secondary or tertiary baseline, choose Project, Assign Baselines. In the Project field, select the project to which you want to assign baselines. In the Secondary and Tertiary fields, select an existing baseline or the current project. You can assign the same project as secondary and tertiary baselines.
You can assign only one primary, secondary, and tertiary baseline to a project. Secondary and tertiary baselines are not required.
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Select a project from the list of open projects.
Select the baseline to use for summarization or earned value.
Baseline assignments are user-specific, meaning that each user can choose a different version for his/her active baseline to the current project.
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278 Part 4: Updating and Managing the Schedule
Comparing Current and Baseline Schedules
For more information about updating the schedule, see “Updating, Scheduling, and Leveling” on page 283.
After a project is updated, you can quickly evaluate progress and performance onscreen. Use a layout that shows current and baseline bars to identify tasks that start or finish later than planned. In the list of activities, include columns for the planned value, actual costs to date, and earned value to identify tasks that are behind schedule or over budget. For detailed reporting, create schedule and activity matrix reports and resource and cost graphics. Run the Earned Value report to analyze cost and schedule variance using the project or primary baseline. Displaying baseline and current bars in the Gantt Chart indicates how the schedule is progressing according to the original plan.
BL appears before any data item that is available from a baseline project.
A target comparison makes it easy to see variances between the current and baseline dates. Add columns in the Activity Table for almost any data item from the baseline project. Display activity bars that represent baseline dates. You can also display target and variance data on the activity bars.
When the current project is open, you can view, but not change, baseline data. To modify the baseline, you must first restore it as a separate project. You can also update baseline project data using the Update Baseline utility.
This layout includes current and baseline columns for start and finish dates.
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Setting preferences for baseline values Choose to calculate the earned value from the Budgeted or At Completion values of the project or primary baseline. For example, based on the setting chosen, you can add either the budgeted or the at completion duration to the BL Start date to calculate the BL Finish date. Go to Admin, Admin Preferences. On the Earned Value tab, in the Earned Value Calculation section, choose to calculate earned value using the project or primary baseline, then select Budgeted values or At Completion values to calculate earned value.
Primavera - Project Management