The following is a compilation of this past week's tweets (@tprusk1) with thoughts on rebaselining a project.

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Remember that the baseline plan is what is expected to happen. Once the project is underway there will be variances to the plan. Minor variances do not require the plan itself to change. Major variances however may require that the plan be rebaselined.

Projects should be rebaselined when the plan has been so impacted that tracking actuals against the original plan becomes meaningless. Sometimes projects need to be rebaselined because the approach must be changed. If you switch from a COTS to a custom solutiion for example.

Before rebaselining the project make sure you know exactly where the project stands. What tasks are done, still underway, or yet to do. When preparing the new baseline make sure to reevaluate the WBS and add or remove tasks to reflect the new plan and schedule. When projects are behind the tendency is to rush the replan. You want to do it quickly but also need to do it right. 1 replan is bad enough.

Make sure to save the original plan so that you can compare it to the replan as part of lessons learned. This can be useful for future work as it gives you a view into why the plan had to be changed.

This week the tweets looked at using a baseline plan and the tracking actuals against that plan. The following is a compliation of the week's series.

A baseline project plan is the estimated schedule, costs, tasks, and deliverables for a project. In essence it is what is expected to happen. The baseline plan should be approved by management and thus sets the schedule, cost, and deliverable goals for the project. Remember that the baseline plan is still an estimate and there will be changes to the scope, schedule, tasks, and budget along the way.

So why do a baseline plan? The baseline sets the stage to start the project and allows others to plan to be ready to support the project. As the project progresses you will use the baseline plan in two ways. 1) To manage the project 2) To track actual against the project.

Although the project plan itself will change throughout the project the baseline itself should not be altered unless there is a major change. What you want to do with the baseline is for each task capture actual start and finish dates as well as actual work. The actual numbers will help spot potential areas where the project can be at risk pof schedule or cost overruns. Actual project data is very useful for future projects, Having data from past projects helps provide future projects with better estimates.

Tracking actual data will also help you better manage resources and be able to make adjustments to assignments as needed.

Next week we will continue looking at baseline plans and how to deal with scope and major schedule changes plus when to rebaseline a plan. You can follow the weets themselves at @tprusk1.

"Superhuman effort isn't worth a damn unless it achieves results." - Sir Ernest Shackleton

Recently I wrote about project leadership vs. project management and how our role as project managers also puts us in a leadership role in many organizations. I was sent a job description for a PM that indicated that companies are seeing PMs as leaders as well as managers. The following is a portion of that job description.

·    Project team leadership skills including:

·    Estimating and setting project goals and milestones
·    Building team(s), motivating and leading team members to reach project milestones
·    Working closely with customers and vendors on project teams.
·    Keeping all team members involved, productive and challenged.
·    Sharing project information freely and on a timely basis
·    Using other resources and teams in a productive manner
·    Communicating and working with other Information Technology departments
·    Coaching and mentoring staff.

What is important to note here is that as PMs we need to understand that our role is to be a leader and a project manager. As a leader we set the tone for the team on how to get the project done. As a manager we coordinate the tasks and resources to execute the project.

Seems like a big task but as Shackleton alluded to if we achieve the results then the effort is worth it.

When putting together a project plan make sure to add in time for revieiwng the plan with others. This step is very important in communicating and acheiving buy in for the plan. Good project planning is a team excercise.

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The following is a compilation of tweets on people change management during a project

The main reasons company take on projects is to address a business issue or problem. This introduces change to the organization. Change within an organization must be managed very carefull. Otherwise the change may have a negative impact on the organization.

• The first step in people change management is to identify those who will be impacted by the change.
• When identifying those who will be impacted make sure to look at both internal and external groups
• After identifying those impacted by the change the next step is to measure or quantify the level of the impact.
• One way to help asses the impact is to document the current process and map it against the proposed process to identify the gaps.
• Once the gaps have been identified you can now develop a cvhange management plan to address them.
• The change management plan should include items such as training, communication, and socialization around the changes.
• The change management plan should also include metrics for measuring usage. Metrics can include # transactions/hr, accuracy, or log in time.
• Also consider using follow up surveys or interviews to get feedback from the users. This can be helpful for future updates to the app.

Keep in mind when building the change management plan that yours is just one project and there may be other projects in the organization that impact the same group of people. If possible coordinate your activities with the other projects. One example of this is training. If your project requires 2 hours of training in a class room and another project requires two hours of training can the two classes be held on the same morning to minimize taking the users away from their work place?