Second Baseline in Cobra

It probably has not been an issue in the past because this tool was used predominantly for government contracting, where the baseline was sacred, and changes were tightly controlled. However, it is understandable that this feature would broaden the useability of Cobra within industry.

We will put this into the suggestions for a future product release.

Alternatively, this could be handled with procedures and training.

It would require the setting of only one baseline - whatever baseline was deemed to be more important - probably the customer baseline. The Program Managers would work with each CAM individually to establish the target performance on a Cost Account by Cost Account basis.

Each CAM would then aim for his more aggressive target, and measure his variances respectively. Managers could be bonused, for example, on making a positive variance of a certain amount. (Managers always understand bonuses.)

Not directly.

A work-around would involve setting up a second project, made from an image of the original project. This second project could then be re-baselined, allowing for managers to work with two sets of targets. Statusing could be made easy by using batch statusing. Unfortunately, any changes to work packages would have to be manually entered for both systems. For a program with lots of changes, this could mean lots of work.