Managing Projects Using Project Baselines

Baselines in RationalPlan Project Management SoftwareA baseline as the name suggests is a line that is being used as a base for future measurement. It is a reference. In Project Management, the term baseline refers to an accepted and approved project plan. Usually known as project baseline, it is a must for a project manager that wish to monitor and evaluate the success of the project. Without it there is no possibility to compare the current status of the project with the initial estimated one.

Once established what the baseline is, the next important step is to store it for future use. If it is not stored, then it cannot be used to compare against it and it is meaningless. For a project there can be saved multiple baselines depending on the project size and how often the project plan changes.

To obtain the best efficiency a project manager should best use a project management software to create the detailed project plan. After it gets approved the manager should save it as a baseline project plan. During the project execution, comparisons can be done between the initial baseline estimates and the current status to compute variances. This comparison can be done either manually or automatically by software tools. Of course the second approach is preferred.

Types of project baselines

Since a project baseline includes many data from a project it is difficult to manage it as a whole and usually it is broken into several parts. This makes the complexity of baseline management easier to deal with. Project baselines generally include:

  • Scope baseline – the technical, physical and functional requirements for deliverable products
  • Schedule baseline – the project schedule and all of the elements supporting the schedule
  • Cost/Budget baseline – an approved budget usually in a time distribution format used to estimate, monitor, and control overall cost performance on the project
  • Quality/Risk baseline – the set of known possible changes (uncertainties) that could impact the performance of the project (more…)
By |2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00September 24th, 2012|Project Management Software, Project Tracking|1 Comment

RationalPlan Project Management Software Goes Viral Using Popular Social Networks

Social media networks for RatinalPlan Project Management SoftwareThe team behind RationalPlan Project Management Software recently revamped their website, offering a new modern look to their users. In addition to that, the social networking life caught form on the project management blog and through the help of the well known social platforms Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Project managers need more that just a project management solution to successfully manage their projects. They also need to have access to project management related articles and discussions on forums, blogs and social media. The experience and knowledge is gathered in time and this is a long process. However a faster solution is to obtain it from experienced and senior managers.

“We reached the conclusion that our users need more besides our RationalPlan products. They also need to learn how to use them, they need tools and techniques to be applied, they need a place where to chat and share opinions. And what better place to find all that than through our forums, blogs and social networking sites?” says Gabriel Toader, CEO of RationalPlan.

Users can stay up to date with the buzz around RationalPlan products by subscribing to feeds or can actively participate on the Project Management Facebook or Project Management Google Plus pages. Twitter fans were also not forgotten. (more…)

By |2022-11-18T10:20:11+00:00September 11th, 2012|News, Project Management Software, RationalPlan|Comments Off on RationalPlan Project Management Software Goes Viral Using Popular Social Networks
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