Baseline
The approved reference point for scope, cost and schedule against which performance is measured, and the thing every progress report implicitly assumes has not moved.
A baseline only has meaning as a comparison. Reported performance is a statement about the distance between where the programme is and where the baseline says it should be, so the baseline has to be fixed for the report to say anything.
Re-baselining is legitimate and sometimes necessary. What makes it hazardous is that each individual re-baseline is usually reasonable, properly approved and wrong on nobody’s terms, while the cumulative movement appears in no report at all, because every report compares performance to the current baseline.
Sources
ISO 21502:2020, guidance on project management, Clause 7, covering planning, scope, schedule, cost and change control. PMBOK Guide, Eighth Edition, November 2025, scope, schedule and finance performance domains.
Read the sources
- ISO 21502:2020, guidance on project managementAbstract and contents free; the guidance text is sold.
Belongs to
Delivery & Controls
Argued in full
A forecast that never moves is not stable, it is unexamined