When preparing for an Integrated Baseline Review (IBR), Deltek Cobra has a number of reports that can be very useful. Here we take a closer look at some of Deltek Cobra’s audit reports that can help you prepare for the rigors of a formal Integrated Baseline Review.
Audit Reports for an IBR
The first thing to note is that these reports fall under the category of “Audit”, which can be selected at the top of the Report Wizard dialog using the Category field.
With the Audit category selected, you will see the follow set of six reports. Any one of these may be requested for review during the IBR, but more commonly for projects that haven’t yet seen much in the way of changes to the Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB) only a couple of these might be of interest to the reviewers. We’ll focus on these for this article.
Project Plng Stats
As it’s description points out, the Project Planning Statistics report is used to evaluate the control accounts and work packages. More specifically this report show how many of a particular type of Earned Value Technique (EVT) is being employed. That is to say, the auditors are interested in the quantities of work packages being measured discretely compared to those with more subjective EVT selections.
For example too much Level of Effort (LOE) in a project may generate some push-back from the auditors because it never shows a schedule variance and can also, if not properly segregated under control accounts, cause discrete work package performance to be masked by overbearing LOE work packages.
Ideally you need to keep your LOE work packages to a minimum and not let their total budget value exceed 10% of the overall Budget at Complete (BAC) for the project. This report is sometimes referred to as JIG-6; a throwback to the old C/SCSC Joint Implementation Guide (JIG) vernacular.
Work Authorization Document (WAD)
The Work Authorization Document or WAD is used to show the auditors that all control accounts in the project have been literally signed off by both the Program Manager and the Control Account Managers (CAMs).
Once the PMB is loaded and approved in the Cobra system, the WAD report can be run, printed and distributed to the concerned stakeholders for signature. Ownership of responsibility for the various control accounts of a project are taken seriously by auditors when looking to certify a Earned Value Management System (EVMS), so a WAD is invariably requested during an IBR to ensure ownership and responsibility have been properly and formally given to – and a accepted by – the CAM.
Project Audit
The Project Audit and Log reports are basically the same with the Project Audit report basically a formatted version of the plainer looking Log report. I either case these reports are used to show any and all transactions since the projects Audit feature was turned on.
Other Reports To Support The IBR
So far we’ve focused on just the reports that are categorized as Audit reports. However, other Categories of report will be requested during the IBR including a WBS, WBS Dictionary, OBS, Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM), Control Account Plan (CAP), CPR or IPMR CPR Formats 1 – 7 and Time-phased Costs to mention the main ones. These reports can generally be generated by Deltek Cobra directly unless there are some particular requests by the auditors not supported in Cobra. Graphical WBS diagrams for example would have to be created by a third-party tool based upon the data Cobra produced in the standard Excel spreadsheet.
Reports that can be used to cover some of these additional IBR Reporting requests include:
Summary
Deltek Cobra can create all the EVM required reports directly or provide the raw data for more customized formats for a particular Integrated Baseline Review event. Keep in mind that if a the report you need isn’t specifically named in the Cobra Reports list, you can customized Cobra report templates using Microsoft Excel to get what you need.
Ten Six offer comprehensive training workshops for report customization; so keep us in mind if you’re ever looking to build some of your own Integrated Baseline Review or other specialized reports.
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