Question:
1. What are Project Baselines and why they are important? Can you argue whether or not one of the baselines is more important than the others?
2. How project managers can prioritize the project baselines?
Answer:
1. The projects baselines are generally three in number namely schedule baseline, cost baseline and scope baseline (Verzuh 2015). The combination of all of the three different baselines are said to be the performance measurement baseline. The following is generally used to measure how the performance deviates from the plan. The performance measurement will only be meaningful once the project has a perfect baseline. The baseline of the project must be completely defined and documented before the completion of the project.
The baseline serves as an important element of the project management. The absence of baseline will ensure the absence of the performance measurement and the absence of earned value. The baseline helps to deliver or complete the project within time and ensure the success of the project. It also represents the agreement or the contract for the execution of the following project (Kerzner and Kerzner 2017).
2. The project manager has an immense duty to prioritize the project and complete it within time with success. Some of the ways by which the project can be prioritized are as follows;
- Identification and meeting the shareholders involved in the project
- Meeting the sponsors of the project and identifying and fixing the budget
- Setting up and prioritizing the goals of the particular project
- Defining the deliverables of the project
- Creation of the project schedule by drawing up a Gantt chart and a table
- Identification of the different issues in the project and also completion of the risk assessment
- Presentation of the final plan to the stakeholders of the project for their approval
References
Kerzner, H. and Kerzner, H.R., 2017. Project management: a systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. John Wiley & Sons.
Verzuh, E., 2015. The fast forward MBA in project management. John Wiley & Sons.