Baseline

What is Baseline?

In project management, a baseline is a strongly outlined starting point for your project plan. It’s a benchmark against which you may measure and compare your project’s development. This allows you to monitor the progress of your project over time.

Consider the following scenario: your project is due in six weeks. Is this a positive or negative aspect? If your scheduled baseline takes four weeks to complete, you know there’s a problem, and your team may need to make adjustments to actually accelerate your progress.

Scheduling, pricing, and scope are usually the three main components of a project baseline. To guarantee that all three baselines are on track, they are regularly monitored, regulated, and reported separately. After it’s fully integrated, it might be referred to as a performance assessment baseline (PMB).

A PMB allows you to track and regulate the effects of a change in one component on the others. When your baselines are integrated, you can quickly see how a schedule delay may affect project costs, for example.

A project baseline is a crucial tool for reaching a successful project outcome. It allows you to maintain track of the entire project, track performance, detect potential concerns and immediately spot improvement chances. A lack of a clear project baseline can lead to scope expansion, expense overruns, and even project failure.

A good software system will allow you to properly plan your project and create a project baseline that is accessible to everyone on your team. All stakeholders must understand and support the project baseline to guarantee that everyone is on the same page when it comes to OKRs.

Also, See: Key performance indicators (KPIs)