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:

1. Create the project.
2. Plan control accounts and work packages.
3. Import information from a schedule.
4. Set the project baseline.

Create the Project

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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: Whether you want to capture actual costs at the control account or work package level. The start and finish dates for the project. How Cobra should handle spreading budgets for fiscal periods that contain different numbers of working days. 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.

Learn more about ... Projects Project Properties Dialog Box How to... Enter Budget Information Synchronize Status Dates Assign Ancillary Files to a Project Select the Level at Which to Capture Actual Costs

Plan Control Accounts and Work Packages

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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: Define control accounts and work packages. Enter scheduled start and completion dates for each control account and work package. (Optionally, you can import these dates automatically from a schedule such as Open Plan, Primavera Project Planner, or Microsoft Project.) Select an appropriate earned value management technique for each work package. If the progress technique calls for milestones or steps for the purpose of calculating earned value, define these. Use resources to assign a budget to each work package. Spread the budget over time to obtain a time-phased budget. Cobra can also perform validations before storing the information, checking that: Control account and work package keys are unique. Every work package belongs to a valid control account. Any keys based on code files are valid and have not resulted in a control account being the parent or child of another control account. The assigned resources are valid. If milestones have been defined, Cobra checks that the budget is spread within 5% of the milestone weights. This helps ensure that you are able to earn value in the period during which the costs were budgeted.

Learn more about ... Control Accounts and Work Packages Milestones/Steps Validity Check How to... Add a New Control Account Add a New Work Package Select the Earned Value Method

Import Information from a Schedule

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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... Import Data From Scheduling Tools and Files

Track the Project Baseline with Project Audit Logging

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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: Contract Target Cost Authorized Unpriced Work Contract Budget Baseline Management Reserve Distributed Budget Undistributed Budget Over Target Baseline The baseline log file contains the following information for each transaction. Control account/work package ID Resource code Batch reference number Account credited Amount of credit Account debited Amount of debit Comments entered at the time of the transaction Change number Date of the transaction User ID

Learn more about ... Audit Logging Project Audit Logging Log Significant Changes for IPMR Format 3 Reports Round off Audit Log Transactions How to... Reconcile Project Logs Using the Project Audit Wizard