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

[Mark Durrenberger <m durrenberger comcast net>]

I endorse the EV tools and multiple baselines however, I would like to 
discourage the use of the term "Phase" as a name for a baseline. "Phase" in 
PM lingo has a specific meaning - (see the PMBOK Guide)

Calling each new baseline "Baseline 1", "Baseline 2" etc... is fine. To 
improve upon this, make it clear when the baseline was set - perhaps a date 
field and a notes field so when looking at baseline data it is obvious that 
"Baseline N" set on "1-Apr-2004" and has a note: "baseline set at 
Completion of phase 2 gate review and customer approval"

Also, the lowest number baseline should be the most recent - for example
Baseline 4 set at the beginning of the project, Baseline 3 set when the 
customer changed scope two weeks later, baseline 2 set when the customer 
changed scope again ;-) baseline 1 when we decided to contract out some of 
the scope etc... so each new setting of a baseline pushes the older ones "up"

The EV calculations should default against the most recent baseline ( 
Always Baseline 1) but it would be handy to have the option of "Which 
baseline(s) would you like to compute progress against?"

Remember "Rebaseline" *should* only happen in response to an approved (by 
the customer) change - but being able to set a baseline implies that the 
project has been planned properly :-)

A minor correction to equations below


> Expected Funds to Completion (ETC) = Budget At Completion (BAC),

ETC = BAC / CPI

I've written a simple tutorial on earned value at 
http://www.oakinc.com/pdf/EVTutorial.pdf

Mark

___________________________________________________
MarkDurrenberger
Principal, Oak Associates, Inc.
Advancing the Theory and Practice of Project Management
www.oakinc.com


Progress might have been all right once, but it's gone on too long.

                                                  Ogden Nash