Chapter 5, Defining a Baseline for Project Progress

Creating baselines

In this exercise, you will open a project template, New Product Launch, or any other template in the Microsoft gallery that does not have a baseline applied. This exercise will help you understand the importance of baselines in project management and how they can be used to monitor and control project performance.

Choose a Microsoft template at File | New; templates are listed on the right. Select New Product Launch if available to you, or select any of the other templates with no baseline included:

1. Open the Statistics window.
2. Create a baseline for your project.
3. View the Statistics window again, noting that the baseline has been applied.
4. Track the progress of tasks in the schedule. Make changes that would affect the end dates – changing some durations, marking some tasks complete, and so on.
5. Review the baseline data in various tables (e.g., Cost and Variance) and analyze the...