Integrated Baseline Reviews – Are You Prepared?
Are you getting ready for an Integrated Baseline Review (IBR)? There are three processes that will help you prepare.
They are:
- Baseline maintenance process
- Risk management process
- Scheduling processes
Do you have all these in place? Read on to find out how your processes shape up.
Maintain the baseline
On a project where earned value management is expected, it’s important to maintain your project baselines.
The performance measurement baseline (PMB) should reflect what’s required to complete the outstanding work. There should be a management process in place to maintain the baseline. This involves making sure everyone knows the process for dealing with changes.
We know changes happen on projects and programs, especially as the work of achieving the deliverables starts to happen. Tasks get delayed or switched around to accommodate other requirements, or work finishes early.
Prior to Integrated Baseline Reviews, the baseline is developed as an integrated process. It involves contractors and government agencies working together to understand the requirements for the work, define what needs to happen and identify associated risks (we’ll come back to risks later).
Work should be planned objectively, with defined work packages that can be measured so progress can be tracked and the earned value reports will be accurate. Work packages should have owners who were responsible for providing the estimates. It’s important to know how the estimates were created and what assumptions were made (if any) so that confidence levels are clear.
The PMB integrates the budget and schedule in a way that presents the work as achievable. Everyone needs to feel it’s a realistic representation of the work required so that at the IBR there is confidence in the overall plan.
Manage the risk
Risk management is something you’ll do throughout the project or program. The IBR is business-focused, so expect risk to be a big part of what you’ll discuss during the review. You’ll be expected to talk about the risks to the PMB based on the processes in place and the likelihood of achieving delivery as specified in the baseline. In other words, the more you can show that you have solid processes in place, the lower the overall risk of delivery should be.
A solid risk management process leading up to the review will help the team prepare for this. There should be a set of process documents that outline what is expected and classify any risks that have an impact on the PMB. Those are the risks that will play the biggest part in the IBR. Make sure each risk has the normal things you’d expect to see on a risk log:
- Likelihood of occurrence
- Impact(s) if it does happen with a severity rating
- Risk response and appropriate management actions
- Risk owner who will lead on the relevant management plan.
The risk management process continues after the IBR as well, and in fact the review itself might throw up some new risks that the program manager can add to the risk log.
Manage the schedule
Finally, there’s work to be done to make sure your schedule is IBR-ready. In fact, there are a few business processes that fall into this category, but we are including them all under the heading of ‘schedule management’ because your expert schedulers and earned value management analysts on the team will probably handle them all together.
They include:
- Maintaining the schedule accurately with resource allocations
- Inputting actual data and reviewing estimates to ensure estimate at completion is accurate
- Preparing earned value management reports for the program team to assist with decision-making.
In other words, carrying out their normal roles to support the management of the program.
If these roles do not happen in a professional and timely way, the earned value management data will be out of date, the schedule won’t reflect what is actually happening on the ground and the program management team won’t have the information they need to forecast forward or manage performance. The IBR will be inherently more risky because the underlying processes to support delivery are weak.
At the IBR, you should be able to show that the team has processes in place to manage the project and that these are robust – and that people follow them! That could be supported by earned value management training, for example, so team members use consistent methods across the program.
While it’s usual for Integrated Baseline Reviews to be carried out towards the start of a program, after the contract has been awarded, the program may require another IBR in the future. This can be necessary if there is a major event that throws the program off-course, such as a shift in dates or a change to the contracted work that alters the budget or timeline. This would prompt the team to revisit the baseline and conduct another formal review to secure support for the work going forward.
The processes above are things that continue throughout the project: you’ll be constantly reviewing progress against the PMB, managing risk and undertaking other business processes to maintain the integrity of the schedule. They aren’t the only processes you’ll use to manage the program, but they are key to making sure that you’re ready for an IBR when the time comes.
That’s why it’s important to have post-contract support in place for after you sign on the dotted line. In fact, the hard work of delivering the project is only just beginning, and a solid set of processes that support project management best practice, scheduling, and earned value management will set the team up for success in the longer term.