What are Baselines and How do I use them?

In this article we will review Baselines, what they are and how you can use them.

To start out we will define what a baseline is. A baseline is a minimum or starting point used for comparison. Setting a baseline for a scheduled scope element, locks in its planned schedule and therefor cost at the time of base-lining allowing you to compare the variance from the plan to what is actually happening. You can come in under baseline, over baseline, or exactly at baseline.

Lets set a baseline for a scope element, click into a project you would like to set a baseline for on the projects tab in the top navigation bar as highlighted below.

Now let's choose a scope element in this project you would like to baseline, or go ahead and create a new one.

Then lets navigate to the Gantt tab in the top right corner as highlighted below.

Now lets enter some start and end dates for our scope element as highlighted below in the start and finish date cells. You'll notice other scope elements may have the blue bar under the scope element representing the baseline for the element and our new item does not have this yet. This is because the baseline was set before the scope change or addition was made.

If you choose to you can re-baseline the entire project by clicking the save baseline in the gray navigation bar just above your schedule as highlighted below. Note this will re-baseline your whole project and so if a scope has been changed or moved since the last baseline the new baseline will be the new comparison for current progress.

To just add a baseline to one singular item and not re-baseline the entire project continue on to the steps below where we will walk though this.

One way is to just add a baseline for one item and not change the baseline for your entire project is to scroll over a bit and click on the Baseline Start and Baseline Finish boxes to manually set the baseline.

The other option is to click the edit button in the top left corner of the gray navigation bar as highlighted below. Scroll down in the pop up editing prompt to find Baseline Start and Baseline Finish where you will be able to edit the dates to set your baseline.

Now you have your baseline you can monitor what things are outside of your plan or that have variance, and this allows you to better track pieces as they are in motion.