Re-forecast Vs Re-baseline

A baseline is a target, a forecast is a best guess.

So if you re-baseline, you are changing the target against which your progress is being measured.

if you re-forecast, you are changing your best guess as to what will happen in the future.

Right Gary,

My project is going through a major scope change impacting the end date of the project. We proposed to clinet to extend the engineering and squeez the construction. Now the project finish date is same but the major milestone dates are changing. Should this change be a re baseline or re-forecast? For how much change in schedule or cost the basis of tracking progress should be change?

Wether you should / can rebaseline in this situation will depend on a number of factors -what is the baseline being used for? Is the baseline a contractual document? are there any payments/defects periods/warranties/etc linked to any of the milestones which are changing? Does the client have an opinion?

If it were up to me, I would rebaseline in these circumstances, for 2 main reasons:

1) A significant change in scope will generally mean a number of new activities which will not be represented in the original baseline, and a number of original baseline activities which are no longer relevant to the revised scope

2) If engineering phase is being lengthend and construction phase is being shortened, with agreement of client, then this will ikely mean 'planned value' or any other target measures based on the original baseline will be very diffierent from what actually is planned, and hence any EV metrics or suchlike will be a poor reflection of performance.

As a general rule (and any contractual obligations nonwithstanding), if the changes to the project have been significant enough for the project team and/or client to feel that the baseline is no longer a true measure of what should be achieved, then re-baseline.

Thanks Gary.