To maintain the integrity of the schedule the P6 project baseline updating process should fall under some form of change management control. Primavera P6 Professional provides a few security profile settings to restrict baseline changes.
Primavera P6 Professional has project baselines and user baselines. P6 project baselines are meant to provide a snapshot of the project plan since inception. Project baselines typically capture the schedule after approval but prior to progress updates. User baselines are for more ad-hoc snapshots of the project. The user baselines come with very few limitations.
The P6 project baseline, however, usually has restrictions. In many organizations, the user community does not have access to the project baseline. It is created and maintained by administrators based upon formal change requests from management or the customer. Primavera P6 Professional has settings to support change management control of the project baseline.
This article looks at the settings to support the Primavera P6 Professional administrator’s control of the project baseline.
Settings for controlling changes to the project baseline are available at the project security profile level. Primavera P6 Professional comes with global security profiles and project security profiles.
Global security profiles are assigned directly to a user. The project security profiles are a little more involved. Project security profile assignments are assigned at the juncture where the Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS) meets the Enterprise Project Structure (EPS). In this article we adjust the user’s security profile at the proper OBS and EPS to provide the appropriate user control of the project baseline.
Figure 1 displays the three project security profile settings to control baselines.
Figure 1
When all three privileges are active the user can add/edit/delete baselines and update baselines, Figure 2.
Figure 2
The user also may assign baselines, Figure 3.
Figure 3
What happens when we take away add/edit/delete baseline privileges, Figure 4?
Figure 4
Now we have a twofold problem. One, our user cannot add/edit/delete any baseline, Figure 5.
Figure 5
(Note the dimmed out or ghosted out icons, indicating these features are no longer available.) And two, our user, however, can still change the assignment of the project baseline, Figure 6.
Figure 6
Let’s now allow add/edit/delete baseline privileges and takeaway assign project baselines privileges, Figure 7.
Figure 7
Now we are able to create baselines, Figure 8.
Figure 8
But we cannot change the assignment of the project baseline, Figure 9.
Figure 9
This is better. The only way to delete a baseline is to first undo the assignment. Well, our user cannot change or undo the project baseline assignment, so they cannot delete the project baseline. Now our security profile settings provide a much better scenario for restricting our user. Note that the user can change the assignment of the user baselines, which is what we want.
We still have one outstanding issue the user can update the baseline, Figure 8. We do not want our user to update the project baseline, so we take away the run baseline update privilege, Figure 10.
Figure 10
Now our user is able to create baselines, but not update baselines, Figure 11.
Figure 11
As before, the user cannot change the project baseline, Figure 12, but our user can change the user baselines.
Figure 12
Summary
The P6 project baseline should remain fixed throughout the life of the project. However, if significant project scope changes occur during the course of execution, then it may be appropriate to update the project baseline. But only by following strict project baseline change management procedures. Primavera P6 Professional provides administrators the settings supportive of a rigorous project baseline change management control process.