I was wondering what the diffrence was between using "deadline" and
baselining. I mostly have to track if we are on schedule and where we fell
off schedule.
Thanks
A deadline is an planned/intended finish date for the entire project
or a major portion thereof. Baselining is the way you capture your
original project, dates, work, costs, etc to compare to your active
plan as things progress and change. You should rarely enter baseline
values manually. They are created en masse when you do a Tools,
Tracking, Save Baseline. And projects should rarely be -re-Baselined.
Usually after a major scope change or a major schedule reconciliation
with agreement between all major stakeholders.
So the answer to your question is that you need the Baseline to know
"if we are on schedule and where we fell off schedule", but not by
actually entering dates. The Deadlines are used to set a planned end
date to major milestones and the intended Project finish.
Hope this helps in your world.