Set Up Projects and Project Baselines
Once you have settled on the design of your project management system, you are ready to set up your projects and enter baseline information. Organizing project information in Cobra involves deciding how basic project information will be entered, stored, and made available for reporting. It relies on a number of data structures, including code files, calendars, resources, rates, and cost classes and sets.
In Cobra, this typically consists of the following procedures:
- Create the project.
- Plan control accounts and work packages.
- Import information from a schedule.
- Set the project baseline.
Create the Project | Related Topics |
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When you set up a new project in Cobra, you define all the basic information about the project, including the code files, calendar, resource, and rate files associated with the project.
You can also indicate:
Once you have created a project, you can define information such as contract/budget values, links to a scheduling network, associated code files, and so on. |
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Plan Control Accounts and Work Packages | Related Topics |
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Once you set up your project in Cobra, you can enter budget baselines for control accounts and work packages. This is a multi-step process:
Cobra can also perform validations before storing the information, checking that:
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Learn more about ... Control Accounts and Work Packages How to... |
Import Information from a Schedule | Related Topics |
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Cobra is designed to work without reference to a schedule. However, using the critical path method of scheduling is an effective way of establishing schedule dates and monitoring progress. Therefore, Cobra allows you to import scheduling information. You can create your entire Cobra project directly from a schedule. You can transfer control accounts, work packages, and resources from the schedule and maintain the resource profile. You can also generate status and a complete forecasts from the schedule. This feature not only saves data entry time, it also greatly reduces the risk of data entry error. |
Learn more about ... Prepare Cobra for Schedule Integration Share Cost and Schedule Information File Format for Importing Status Information Integration Wizard — Scheduling Tools and Files Integrate Project Data Process How to... |
Track the Project Baseline with Project Audit Logging | Related Topics |
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Once you finish planning your control accounts and work packages, you can set the project baseline. After you verify that the initial contract values are correct, you can turn on project auditing. Once auditing is turned on, it creates a baseline log file for the project. Thereafter, Cobra automatically records any movement occurring between different budget accounts as the result of budget transactions at the control account, work package, or resource level. You can also use the project auditing log to monitor funds that are transferred between accounts manually. These transactions are identified by a reference number and a comment that you enter, allowing the record to be used for change control purposes. The use of project auditing is optional in Cobra. If used, however, it provides one way for project managers and clients to check on the authorization and movement of funds between different budget accounts. For example, you can use the project auditing log to view information about:
The baseline log file contains the following information for each transaction.
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Learn more about ... Log Significant Changes for IPMR Format 3 Reports Round off Audit Log Transactions How to... |