SharePoint Project Management Central™ (PM Central™) R2.0 is packed with great new features that make project management easier. In addition to providing multi-level tracking and reporting, PM Central also allows project managers to create baselines for improved project and task management. With PM Central R2.0, you can now create baselines for:

• Project Schedule
• Project Cost
• Scheduled Tasks

What’s a Baseline?

Baselines allow project managers to compare and track changes that occur to a project schedule. A baseline is a snapshot of project information (such as information about tasks, resources, and assignments) that’s taken before the project gets updated with progress. Baselines let project managers compare the changes in dates, cost, work, and more throughout a project’s duration.

Capturing a Baseline

Baselines are created in the project site’s Tasks tab under Baseline View.

To capture a baseline:

1) Update the Budget Cost and Budget Work for the project. Read this blog post to learn how.

2) Create tasks. Allocate resources and costs to those tasks, then update the schedule. Follow steps 6-7 in KB.12434: Using PM Central in 10 Steps for more information.

3) Update the project’s cost and schedule in Tasks > Progress Management > Update Project Cost & Schedule to get the Project Cost and Project Work values. See this blog post to learn how. If you don’t update the budget cost, the budget work, the project cost, or the project schedule before baselining, the Project Cost Baseline Web Part will not display any values because it won’t have any data.

4) Now go to the Tasks > Baseline View tab. Before you capture the baseline, make sure that the task information is updated and recalculated in Tasks > All Tasks. To update the task information, click Recalculate.

Choose the baseline that you want to capture:

• Project Schedule
• Project Cost
• Scheduled Tasks

Click Capture Baseline from the toolbar.

5) The baseline is displayed. The green progress bar represents the baseline; the blue progress bar displays the actual project.

Use the baseline to monitor changes to the project’s schedule, cost, and tasks.

To remove the baseline, click Clear Baseline. In the current release, only one baseline can be captured in each section (Project Schedule, Project Cost, or Scheduled Tasks), so each new baseline that you capture will replace a pre-existing baseline. In the future, users will be able to save multiple baselines throughout the project life cycle.

6) After you capture the baseline, you can update the task progress and the project cost and schedule in Tasks > Progress Management. See this blog post to learn how.

The PM Central team is committed to making PM Central the most useful and beneficial project management and collaboration tool available for SharePoint. We welcome your questions and comments in the PM Central forum.

Interested in PM Central R2.0? Contact us today.

Read more posts in the PM Central R2.0 use case series:

• How to Create and Track Data for a Department
• How to Update Budget Cost and Budget Work
• How to Update Progress

And keep checking the Bamboo Team Blog for more use cases.