Seventh Myth (10 Myths of Software Project Planning)

Seventh Myth
I review/modify my plan frequently and it is up to date, I do not need to baseline my project plan?

Baseline is the point where you finalize your plan and believe that the plan will be used to track variations and slack in your project. We baseline a project plan or, part of project plan so that we can compare the progressive plan with baseline plan at any point of time.
The project can be baseline to compare (at any point of time):
1. The Start and End Date of a project plan or, any particular task.
2. The variance in actual work.
3. The variance in duration.
4. The BCWP (budgeted cost of work performed) or, BCWS (budgeted cost of work scheduled) or, to track the EV (earned value).
5. The schedule variance
6. The Cost Variance
7. The variance in project budget
8. We can also calculate various budget/forecast related variances such as BAC (Budget at Completion), ETC (Estimate to complete), EAC (Estimate at Completion), VAC (Variance at Completion), etc.

As a whole, baseline is used to compare your project plan at various stages of project execution and guide you to take preventive and corrective actions. It is also a kind of exercise where you learn through your mistakes, various scenarios/risks/errors during project execution and can use this knowledge to plan effectively in your future plans.