In the interest of schedule integrity it is important to control changes and to control the project baseline. In Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) this may be achieved in more than one way.
The schedule should have at least one baseline to support measurement of schedule changes since commencement of project activities. So you want at least one baseline to be a static copy or snapshot of the schedule after completion of project planning but prior to implementation of this project plan.
Primavera P6 EPPM refers to this original project plan baseline as the project baseline. The project baseline should have some form of change management control. The P6 EPPM administrator has a few settings to help accomplish this project baseline control.
This article discusses ways the Primavera P6 EPPM administrator can control changes to the project baseline.
Primavera P6 EPPM has both user baselines for more ad-hoc tracking of periodic variance and project baselines to measure performance since commencement of project work. The settings for controlling the project baseline are available in the project security profile. Unlike the global security profile, project security profiles are not assigned directly to a user.
Without going into great detail, suffice it to say project security profiles are assigned to the user at the point where the Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS) meets the Enterprise Project Structure (EPS), project or WBS element via the Responsible Manager. In this demonstration we change the settings to the scheduler’s project security profile, which is assigned at the desired OBS and EPS to achieve the necessary scheduler user access control.
The settings affecting the project baseline in the project security profile are found in the project security profiles below Project Data tab, Figure 1.
Figure 1
The two privilege settings in project data are “Add/Edit/Delete Project Calendars” and “Assign Project Baselines”. First we take away both these privileges and observe the effect. The result of removing these two privileges on define baselines is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2
In Figure 2 the project baseline is frozen to any changes. Also, the Add/Edit/Delete baseline icons are unavailable. Not only can we not change the project baseline, but we also cannot Add/Edit/Delete any baseline. This is more restrictive than desired; we want the ability to Add/Edit/Delete user baselines.
Second we restore the project baseline assignment feature and retain restrictions to “Add/Edit/Delete Project Baselines”, Figure 3.
Figure 3
Now we are still unable to “Add/Edit/Delete” any baselines, but we are able to change assignment of the project baseline, Figure 4.
Figure 4
Now our issue is twofold: we really do not want schedulers changing the project baseline assignment and also we still cannot Add/Edit/Delete user baselines.
Thirdly, we restore the Add/Edit/Delete project baseline privilege and takeaway the assign project baselines privilege, Figure 5.
Figure 5
We observe in Figure 6 that we cannot change the project baseline assignment; it is unavailable.
Figure 6
This also means we cannot delete the project baseline, because only unassigned baselines can be deleted. Great! This is what we want.
Finally, we observe that we have the functionality to Add/Edit/Delete other baselines, i.e. user baselines. Again, this is what we want. So restricting the project baseline assignment achieves the dual purpose of restricting changes to the project baseline and allowing changes to user baselines.
We still have one issue to resolve. Primavera P6 EPPM has an update baseline feature that theoretically could change the project baseline. We want to disable this feature too, so absolutely no changes to the project baseline are possible. Takeaway the scheduler’s “Run Baseline Update” privilege in the project security profile’s bottom details tools tab, Figure 7.
Figure 7
Now the update baselines tool is deactivated for all project and user baselines. So it is no longer possible to update user baselines. However, it is still possible to create and/or delete user baselines, Figure 8.
Figure 8
Summary
Project baseline change management is important for the integrity of the project schedule. Primavera P6 EPPM has a few settings that directly effect management of the project baseline.
We recommend disabling the baseline update tool privilege and restricting the setting for assignment of the project baseline. This way those without “Assign Project Baselines” privileges cannot change the project baseline, but they still have privileges to add and delete user baselines.