How to Create a Performance Measurement Baseline for Your Projects

How to Create a Performance Measurement Baseline for Your Projects


The performance measurement baseline (often abbreviated as PMB) is part of the project plan that sets the scope, budget and schedule. It provides a window into the project that allows project managers to see roadblocks and resolve them before the project hits a dead end. It is a tool for the project manager to guide the project, control its progress and performance, and provide transparency for stakeholders and the use of project resources. It is broken up into project scope, project schedule and project cost baselines, which are created by combing the scope statement and defined work on the work breakdown structure (WBS). The schedule baseline is made up of project activities and the cost baseline is the budget allocated to those activities.

The baseline reflects where the project should be at any point in the project while the actual performance shows how far the project has progressed. The importance of a performance measurement baseline to track a project and keep stakeholders updated is clear. It should be part of every project manager's planning phase as the project plan develops, focusing on the project scope, schedule and cost. This data allows the project manager to monitor and track the project, and if the performance measurement baseline indicates the project is delayed, the project manager can find out why and reallocate resources to right the project. The most important details are that the scope of the project is the work that must be completed in order to receive the final deliverable, and that a scope statement should be developed to collect all the work that needs to be done.