This Guest paper was submitted for publication and is copyright to Elizabeth Larson © 2012.
Republished here March 2022.

Step 6: Develop the Schedule and Cost Baselines

Here are the detailed steps involved in developing the schedule and cost baselines.

Identify activities and tasks needed to produce each of the work packages, thus creating a WBS of tasks.
Identify resources, i.e., the people, equipment and materials, if known for each task.
Estimate how long it will take to complete each task.
Estimate cost of each task, using an average hourly rate for each resource.
Consider individuals' constraints, or how much time each can realistically devoted to this project.
Determine which tasks are dependent on other tasks, and develop a critical path.
Develop a schedules and sub‑schedules if necessary. These are calendarizations of all the tasks and their estimates. It shows by chosen time period (week, month, quarter, or year) which resource is doing which tasks, how much time they are expected to spend on each task, and when each task is scheduled to begin and end.
Develop the cost baseline, which is a time‑phased budget, or cost by time period.

This overall process is not a one-time effort. Throughout the project you will most likely be adding to, or repeating some or all of these steps.