Re: [Planner Dev] Suggestion for project tracking planned v. actuals using Phase as a commit/restore tag.

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Tue, 2004-04-20 at 21:54 -0400, Kurt Maute wrote:
> On Tue, 2004-04-20 at 20:11, Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:
> > On Tue, 2004-04-20 at 21:14 +0100, lincoln phipps openmutual net wrote:
> > > Been bugging me to discuss this - Baselines (as MS Project
> > > Refers to them) and how do we implement the same in Planner ?.
> > 
> > Can you just clarify something, since I don't use MS Project: is a
> > Baseline in their notation the same thing as what Planner is calling a
> > Phase? Or does it imply some extra semantics or conditions?
> 
> A baseline is simply the approved plan (which could mean the approved
> schedule, cost, WBS, or all of these).  The M$ implementation of
> baselining is to take a snapshot of the project plan when you save it
> 'as a baseline'.  It then uses that snapshot to compare actual start and
> end dates and such to see how your project is performing.
> 
> A Phase, on the other hand, is simply a collection of related tasks and
> deliverables that usually end in a milestone.  Phases may be defined by
> the methodology (Initiation, Planning, Execution, and Closure phases),
> or they could represent chunks of the software development life cycle
> (proof of concept, first build, second build, final build).
> 
> So if I understand correctly, Lincoln is proposing that instead of
> baselining the whole project in one shot (which should be an option),
> folks may often like to baseline a phase at a time - which is good
> project management practice especially in software development where you
> use the lessons learned from each build to plan the next build.
> 
> Seems like a good plan to me.

Excellent. Thanks for the descripion. The Planner Phase definition I
already knew, but the rest was new to me. Sounds like a useful feature.

Cheers,
Malcolm