In the Trenches with Microsoft® Office Project 2007

Working with Baselines and Interim Plans

When you finally reach a plan you want to execute, your last step in the planning phase should be to create a baseline for your project. A baseline is a snapshot of your project at a moment in time. In a baseline plan, Project stores start and finish dates, duration, work, and cost information about tasks, resources, and assignments. You can use this information later, to compare your original estimates to what actually happens as you execute your project. By making this comparison, you can be alert for shifts in timing. Good project managers use these comparisons to become better project managers in the future by learning what worked and what didn’t work. Interim plans are similar to baselines, but they ...