Learn · Scheduling 101
Baselines: freezing the plan, so late is a measurement rather than a feeling
After this subject you can say what a baseline is and what variance measures, read the frozen plan beside the live one, and ask which copy a late number is measured against.
Three weeks late compared to what?
Ask how a job is going and somebody will say it is about three weeks behind. Behind what, though. Unless a copy of the plan was kept somewhere, the answer is a memory of what the schedule used to say — and the schedule has been edited a hundred times since then.
Why it matters — everyone in the room can be certain the job is late and still be measuring from a different week.
So you keep a copy
A baseline is the plan frozen on a date, kept so today can be measured against it. Save a snapshot of the schedule now, and later you can see how far each activity has drifted from that original plan. Brikt keeps that copy beside the live schedule rather than instead of it, so the work carries on moving and the copy does not.
And the difference has a name
Variance is the difference between where the work is now and where the baseline said it would be. On a row that means its live start beside the saved start, or its live finish beside the saved finish, counted in days — and the count runs both ways, because work can land ahead of the frozen plan as well as behind it.
Why it matters — two people can disagree about whether a job is in trouble. They cannot disagree about a number they are both reading.
Where it turns up
Where the frozen copy holds dates for a row, Brikt draws them as a second lane under that row's live bar, and carries them as their own columns beside the live ones. The grid names one of those columns in exactly these words: Baseline start — the originally-planned start saved when the baseline was set.
You can keep more than one
A job can carry several frozen copies — the original approved plan, the plan after a re-sequence — and one of them is the active one. Every baseline comparison Brikt shows you is made against that one. If you are used to holding two side by side and reading across them, that is a real difference worth knowing.
Why it matters — “which one are we measuring against” is a question with an answer, and it is worth asking before the number is quoted at somebody.
Ask about the copy, not the mood
Ask
Which frozen copy is this measured against?
Instead of
Are we behind?
Ask
When was that copy taken, and what have we changed since?
Instead of
The schedule says we are fine.
Ask
How many days has this row moved from the plan we froze?
Instead of
It feels like about three weeks.
What to remember
- A baseline is the plan frozen on a date, kept beside the live schedule rather than instead of it.
- Variance is that difference counted in days — live start against saved start, live finish against saved finish.
- Brikt draws the frozen dates as a second lane under the live bar, and as columns beside the live ones.
- A job can carry several frozen copies, and baseline comparisons are made against the active one.
- It is what turns “about three weeks behind” from an impression into a count anyone can check.
Find out whether you have one
Open a project you are running and look for a frozen copy of its plan. If there is not one, that is the finding — without an agreed copy to measure from, two people can both be right about how late the job is and mean different weeks. Bring the schedule to a demo and we will take one together.