What makes a good baseline schedule?

A project baseline is one of the essential project management documents created before the project’s execution.  It includes the project execution strategy, key project deliverables, activity planned dates, and important milestones. It generally consists of three parts:

1. Scope Baseline
2. Schedule Baseline
3. Cost Baseline

What is a Schedule Baseline?

A Schedule Baseline is also referred to as a target schedule. It is a vetted copy of the initial project baseline, used to review the project performance and report any variances in the schedule. Furthermore, it creates a path for other relevant project management documents like cost baselines, mobilization plans, and resource allocation plans. As a matter of fact, it is also considered the frozen version of the initial project baseline; this means that the initial project baseline and the schedule baseline are the same.

Why is it important?

Baselines are vital factors for project success. After it is established, it is used to measure the progress of the actual situation and overall performance. Whether you’re on track and within budget is measured through the baselines. It also helps you oversee how a change in budget, scope, or schedule can affect the rest of the project. It also helps the project manager judge if the current performance of the project is enough for the remaining tasks to be completed in the given time. Unavailability or poorly planned baselines can cause delays, quality management problems, stakeholder dissatisfaction, and problems in change management.

What makes a good baseline schedule?

Scope of Work

A lot of projects fail despite having adequate resources, budget, and manpower; this is because of a lack of understanding of the project scope. The project revolves around its scope, which is why it is very important to read the Scope of Work carefully before developing a baseline schedule. This task can be achieved by converting the SoW into a list of deliverables and then checking if all deliverables are covered.

Meeting with Stakeholders

When planning a baseline schedule, taking the opinion of all stakeholders is essential. During the initial meetings, the plan should be explained to the client, company, and everyone involved so that everyone knows their role and that they don’t confuse the project plan with the baseline schedule.

Use of advanced tools

Manually creating baseline schedules for a project can be very hectic and sometimes inaccurate. Many projects are still living in the stone age and use manually drawn bar charts to indicate progress. Advanced planning tools like Primavera P6 or at the very least, MS Project, should be used. These tools facilitate the planning engineer in planning and offer many useful features.

Avoid Unrealistic Deadlines

Everyone wants their project to complete within the given deadline, but giving activities unrealistic durations will not help you achieve that goal. Crash scheduling a project does not mean giving short durations to activities, but it means initiating activities in parallel by noticing their relationships.

Resource Leveling

A lot of baseline schedules fail because of poor resource allocation. When creating the baseline, the planning engineer has to consider all the resources available at his disposal. Otherwise, the team will run out of money, time, or both. Activities should have a uniform allocation of resources.

Reviewing Floats

A high number of total floats indicates an incorrect logic between activities and open ends. Any float of more than 20 should be investigated. Activities with high float values should be ensured to have the right predecessor and successor. A wrong logic will have an impact on the critical path and thus cause the overall duration to increase.

Conclusion

Baseline schedules are essential tools for the project to keep on track and succeed. It also keeps the team motivated and the stakeholders satisfied. Most hurdles that appear during a project lifecycle can be avoided by creating, managing, and tracking a baseline schedule.

For those interested in a career as a Project Scheduler, understanding how to build and maintain a solid baseline schedule is essential.