Re: [Planner Dev] Suggestion for project tracking planned v. actuals using Phase as a commit/restore tag.

[Kurt Maute <Kurt Maute us>]

On Tue, 2004-04-20 at 20:11, Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-04-20 at 21:14 +0100, lincoln phipps openmutual net wrote:
> > Been bugging me to discuss this - Baselines (as MS Project
> > Refers to them) and how do we implement the same in Planner ?.
> 
> Can you just clarify something, since I don't use MS Project: is a
> Baseline in their notation the same thing as what Planner is calling a
> Phase? Or does it imply some extra semantics or conditions?

A baseline is simply the approved plan (which could mean the approved
schedule, cost, WBS, or all of these).  The M$ implementation of
baselining is to take a snapshot of the project plan when you save it
'as a baseline'.  It then uses that snapshot to compare actual start and
end dates and such to see how your project is performing.

A Phase, on the other hand, is simply a collection of related tasks and
deliverables that usually end in a milestone.  Phases may be defined by
the methodology (Initiation, Planning, Execution, and Closure phases),
or they could represent chunks of the software development life cycle
(proof of concept, first build, second build, final build).

So if I understand correctly, Lincoln is proposing that instead of
baselining the whole project in one shot (which should be an option),
folks may often like to baseline a phase at a time - which is good
project management practice especially in software development where you
use the lessons learned from each build to plan the next build.

Seems like a good plan to me.

-- 
Kurt Maute <Kurt Maute us>