Baselined without cost

[yadsters]

I can do quite a bit of stuff in project, however I have not used it for
Earned Value and I know that I need a baseline, work packages, resources and
duration. Teh first time I baselined it, I did not have all the work packages
or the cost for each major task. That was probably a big mistake. How can I
make up for it? What can I do to calculate Earned Value from the beginning of
the project? Don't know anything about Earned Value and project together,
please help. Greatly appreciated.

 

[John]

I can do quite a bit of stuff in project, however I have not used it for
Earned Value and I know that I need a baseline, work packages, resources and
duration. Teh first time I baselined it, I did not have all the work packages
or the cost for each major task. That was probably a big mistake. How can I
make up for it? What can I do to calculate Earned Value from the beginning of
the project? Don't know anything about Earned Value and project together,
please help. Greatly appreciated.

yadsters,
Baseline fields in Project are simply a static snapshot of various
dynamic Project fields. Therefore, any baseline field can be
added/updated manually or even in select groups. However, unless you can
get some kind of cost estimate information that is applicable to the
start of each task, you won't be able to do a true earned value analysis
- at least not from the project start. Assuming your project isn't well
underway, you might just get the necessary cost data and set a baseline
now. Then you can track earned value from this point forward.

But first, you need to educate yourself about earned value. One place to
start is the Project help file. Hopefully, others will post tutorial or
class help resources for earned value.

John
Project MVP

 

[Jim Aksel]

Before you create a baseline moving back in history, make sure to memorialize
your %Complete into a spare field. Then, zero out all the progress. Now
baseline and then add your %Complete back in.

Failure to do so will negate any past variances since baseline sets
BCWS=BCWP and sets SPI & CPI to 1.0. Hopefully you have a manner to obtain
actual costs to put into the tasks. We usually have a separate line item for
ACWP at the work package level.
--
If this post was helpful, please consider rating it.

Jim

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