BSBPMG512: MANAGE PROJECT TIME

Summative assessment 1

Q3.

Explain procedures for managing project baselines, establishment, and variance. (350 words)

The project planning baseline is the defined scope, cost, and schedule expected to be achieved
during the project lifetime. A baseline is a fixed schedule, which represents the standard that is
used to measure the performance of the project. To track a project, you must have something
to compare against. The baseline plan contains the original or planned estimates against which
you can track the project’s actual progress. Usually, a baseline is created immediately after the
project plan is finished and approved, entering tasks, establishing dependencies, and assigning
resources and costs.

Establishing the baseline is the formal end of the planning phase and the beginning of project
execution and control, while variances are the differences found between current project
results and the initial plan, therefore they should be assessed and reported periodically to
stakeholders since there may have impacts to other components of the project management
plan. Controlling the project baseline is absolutely essential to project success. In order to
effectively manage projects, project managers must clearly define the baselines and
understand how deviations to the constraints impact the work and then develop strategies for
responding to baseline changes.

In order to ensure that changes to the baseline parameters are properly considered, it is
recommended to establish a formal change control process. Such a process consists of 3
typical steps: Identify, Evaluate and Respond To changes. Following the steps of the process,
we must create a change request which included a description of the change, the reason for
the change, and the impact on the baselines. Change requests should be submitted to the
sponsor for review and approval. Once a change request is approved, appropriate updates to
the schedule, budget, and WBS must be carried.

Before implementing each decision to change scope, cost and time, it is important to evaluate
the impact in order to make sure the project deliverables wouldn’t be broken. Also, the
importance of discovering the root problem of a delay or schedule variance cannot be
overlooked. This can often be tracked using documents and records such as diaries, incident
logs, occurrence reports, evaluation of options, Gantt, PERT, and other scheduling charts.