Project Management

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When should you update baselines and when should you not?

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Michael Shanklin, MBA PMP CSSGB ACP PSM Director of Business Development| Energy Economics Inc Durham, Nc, United States
I've heard conflicting stories. Some people say you shouldn't update baselines, but I've also seen people say you should update baselines.

Which projections should not be changed and which ones are alright to update as the project progresses?

Thank you
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Kevin Drake Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Only with major changes I would change it
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Milind Patil Bangalore, Karnataka, India
Jul 14, 2017 10:57 AM
Replying to Drew Craig
...
Mike,
Baselines would be updated with any significant change - significant is understandably subjective, but one would have to use their best judgement.

For example, if my project gets bumped down the priority ladder, with revised durations, or if there is an excepted change request, I will re-baseline. That said, you don't necessarily have to update the original. I recommend saving under the other options, baseline1, baseline2, etc. This gives you the ability to then add multiple baselines to the reports to provide a visual effect of the impacts - positive or negative.

Hope that helps.
Agree with Andrew. Thanks.
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Pramod Patil IT Consultant, Project Manager| Aadiya Consulting Plano, Tx, United States
It really depends upon type of Projects you do, Project Management methodology you follow company wide or in your division and lastly what tools you have at your disposal for Project Management.
At a time it becomes very time consuming and tedious to maintain schedule baseline and maintain records of change request to account changes in current version of schedule.

Even after maintaining different versions, how you use those schedule versions to get meaningful insights will answer why do you need baseline or different versions. if amount change request blows up, it becomes very difficult keep track of changes in duration and dates with respect to change request and reason why it changed.
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