Question

Once a project baseline is created and approved, can it be changed? If so, when would you, as a project manager, recommend the project baseline be changed?

Answer 1

The projects base line is used to measure how the performance deviates from the actual plan. The projects performance measurement will be meaningful only if the project had defined accurate baseline. The projects baseline defines the original scope, cost and schedule. The projects baseline should be completely defined and documented before the execution & control activities starts. The key to work with the baseline is it cannot be adjusted when there is slight changes in the schedule. In general once the baseline is stored we cannot change it. But, sometimes it is unavoidable to adjust when the new requirement that implies the huge change on the scope or cost. Also some rare cases where the project was not well scheduled in the beginning stage. In such cases it is useful to keep the initial baseline and save the adjusted schedule as new baseline.