Feature introduction

A baseline is a deliverable that has passed a formal review at a critical project node and entered a state of standardized control. This setting process is called "baselining." The project baseline feature allows Project Managers to solidify approved deliverables into baselines and provides baseline status reports. This helps the team clarify goals, manage changes, monitor project progress, and ensure the project advances as planned to achieve expected outcomes.

Usage scenarios

• Solidify goals during the initiation phase: When initiating a project, the Project Manager creates baselines for the Project Plan, Quality Assurance Plan, and Configuration Management Plan. This clarifies the project scope, quality standards, and configuration management processes, ensuring consensus among the team and stakeholders and reducing execution deviations.
• Initiate development after freezing stories: The Product Manager freezes the current scope of stories using the Story Specification baseline. The development team then breaks down tasks and schedules them based on this baseline. This avoids frequent story changes during development and ensures clear iteration goals.
• Trace and audit changes: When a major project deviation occurs, you can trace the source of the issue (such as a schedule delay caused by a specific story change) through the baseline history records. This facilitates auditing and retrospective reviews.

1. Baseline configuration

Before officially using the baseline feature, please verify the following configurations:

• Admin > Feature Settings > Baseline: Check if the system's overall baseline feature is enabled.
• Admin > Project Process > Feature Settings > Baseline: Waterfall and Hybrid Waterfall projects can enable the baseline feature. You can independently enable or disable baselines for different project processes. Please verify this setting for your specific project process.
• Admin > Project Process > Review Process: Baselines have a built-in review process, which defaults to a simple approval flow. Check if this default flow suits your needs. If not, you can modify it or create a new review process.
• Admin > Project Process > Review Process > Checklist: You can configure checklists for baseline reviews based on your business scenarios. Different project processes support different checklists.
• Admin > Project Process > Deliverable: Since a baseline controls deliverables, you must ensure deliverables are configured before using the baseline feature.
• Admin > Members > Permissions: Check if permissions for the baseline feature have been correctly assigned to relevant users.

2. Create baselines

Click Baseline > Create Baseline under the project menu to baseline an approved or confirmed deliverable. Alternatively, you can navigate to Review > Initiate Review and select the baseline review type to baseline a deliverable.

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Users must manually input the baseline name and version number. The configuration item dropdown list will display deliverables that have already been approved or confirmed.

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3. Baseline review

When a baseline is initiated, the system triggers the baseline review workflow according to the configured review process.

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During the review, the system displays check items based on the configured checklist. If reviewers find issues with the baseline content, they can log them in the check items. This allows the baseline initiator to easily view and modify the content, and helps reviewers track the progress of the issue.

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If the review passes, the baseline is successfully created. The system will tag the deliverable's version with a baseline indicator on its list and details pages. If the review fails, the user must modify the baseline information and re-initiate the review, or create a completely new baseline.

4. Create baselines (with project change enabled)

If the project change feature is enabled for the project process, you can use the Create Baseline function to baseline deliverables that are approved, confirmed, and have not been modified since their last review.

The configuration item dropdown list will only display approved or confirmed deliverables that are currently in their latest version status.

After you click Save, deliverables in the "Reviewing" and "Passed" statuses will be frozen, meaning they cannot be edited or deleted. If the review fails, the deliverable will unfreeze, allowing modifications. Once modified and approved again, you can re-baseline it.

If you want to modify or add content to a successfully baselined deliverable, you must initiate a project change. Once the project change is reviewed and approved, you can proceed with the modifications. After modifications are complete, creating a new baseline will freeze the item again.

Freezing logic for different deliverable types:

• Project Plan: Baselining freezes the project plan deliverable and the project phases. Additions, deletions, and modifications are prohibited.
• Story Specification: Baselining freezes the story specification deliverable and the linked stories under the project. Additions, deletions, and modifications are prohibited.
• Design-type deliverables: Baselining freezes the design deliverables and the related designs. Additions, deletions, and modifications are prohibited.
• Test-type deliverables: Baselining does not freeze test cases.
• Document and other deliverables: Baselining freezes the deliverable and the submitted documents. Deletions and modifications are prohibited.

5. Compare baselines

If you want to know what has changed in a new baseline compared to a previous one, you can use the baseline comparison feature. Click the Compare Baseline button in the baseline list and select two baselines to view their differences.

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• Black text: The deliverable version is identical in both baselines.
• Green text: The deliverable does not exist in Baseline 1 but exists in Baseline 2.
• Red text with strikethrough: The deliverable exists in Baseline 1 but is deleted in Baseline 2.
• Orange text: The deliverable exists in both baselines, but the version numbers are different.

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You can click the toggle button in the upper left corner to filter the view and only show changed items.

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6. Baseline status report

The baseline status report displays information such as passed baselines, baseline versions, configuration items and versions under the baseline, and issues identified during the review process. The baseline status report supports data export.

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7. Baseline workflow

If you want to add custom fields or actions to the baseline module, you can modify the baseline workflow.

• To modify the baseline feature globally across the system, navigate to Admin > Workflow > Baseline.
• To modify the baseline feature for a specific project process, navigate to Admin > Project Process > Workflow > Baseline.

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