Task Baselines

NOTE: This functionality is only available in the Diary++ add on.

Anyone who has spent much time doing project management will have run into a baseline before. A baseline is basically a snapshot of your project plan at a particular time, which you can compare against as the project progresses.

Baseline Information

There are two key pieces of information stored for a baseline.

JXCirrus can store two types of baseline:

Setting a Baseline

There are two ways to set a baseline.

Setting Manually

This is done through the Entry Edit dialog. Go to the "Spent" tab. At the top of this page, there are 3 fields:

These values can be changed at a later date if you need to...

Taking a Snapshot

This is the simpler way to set a baseline:

  1. Set up the basic structure of your project (as a set of tasks).
  2. Let the system do its automatic planning. This will set up the start and finish dates for the work.
  3. At the top level of the project, open the Item View.   Open the extended toolbarGrow, and press the Baseline button (if you want a duration-only baseline), or press Baseline Date s (if you want to compare hours and date).

JXCirrus Project will now set baselines for this task and all tasks under that.

Clearing a Baseline

  1. Open the Entry Edit dialog and go to the Spent tab.
  2. Set the Baseline Duration, Baseline Start and Baseline End fields to blank.

Tracking a Baseline

There are 2 locations where you can see your baseline.

  1. In the Item View: If you have set a baseline, it shows "Baseline State" - This tells you whether you are good (ahead of schedule), marginal (at risk) or poor (already over budget), and will also tell you how much you are over/under.
  2. In the Tree View: In the completion field, the system will show an indicator icon if there is a baseline set.

Baseline GoodIf you are on track, or ahead of schedule.

Baseline MarginalIf the system predicts that you will end up over budget.

Baseline PoorIf you are already over budget.

Baseline Progress

If this flag is set, then the task will assume that you are spending a constant amount of time on the task between its start date and end date. If the task is to last 2 weeks, and baseline progress is set, then if you have spent more than half of the time by the end of the first week, then the system will show you being over budget for the baseline.

Auto-Baseline

This is something that is only available using Object Specs (so it can only be used in the premium version only). This value lets you automatically set a baseline as soon as a task is created. It also gives you the option of having the baseline follow the number of hours set in the task. There are 4 possible values for this: