2.5 DEVELOP THE PROJECT BASELINE – OVERVIEW

Develop the project baseline – Overview

This is an overview of the following sections which will explain in detail how to create a project baseline.

All projects are governed by hard rules like scope, deadlines, and budget. These are all part of a project baseline and without them, you do not have a project but a potentially endless odyssey.

The project baseline is a cornerstone of your project plan. Once it is established, you can determine if you are delivering what you are supposed to be delivering and if works are in time and within budget.

The typical project baseline has three elements:

• The scope baseline
• The schedule baseline
• The cost baseline

All three are linked. Therefore, it is also called the triple constraint. If one of them is affected, at least another one will be affected as well, or both.

• It will be difficult to enlarge the scope of delivery without affecting time and cost.
• If you reduce the available time this will probably impact the scope you can deliver in the reduced time window and perhaps the acceleration of works will affect costs as well.
• A similar effect is expected if the available budget is reduced: this will probably impact the scope of delivery or the quality of that scope. It might also take longer to complete if the budget reduction is implemented stretching funds over time.

When you have integrated all three elements properly, you are in a much better position to oversee the core of the project in an integrated way.

In the next sections we will explain in detail how to build an integrated project baseline including scope of delivery (this is the what we envisage to deliver), when it is expected to be ready and how much it is expected to cost.