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

.

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.