Glossary
What is a re-baseline?
A re-baseline is a deliberate, recorded change to a delivery commitment: a new outcome, date or capacity, with the reason for the change, kept beside the original baseline instead of overwriting it.
The alternative to a re-baseline is not an unchanged plan. It is a plan that changes anyway, silently, so that at the end nobody can say what was promised or when it stopped being true.
When to re-baseline, and when not to
Re-baseline when the promise itself has changed: the scope was cut or extended, a team's capacity was withdrawn, a dependency moved the date, or the people who rely on the commitment agreed to something different. The trigger is a decision, and it can happen while the work is still on track.
Do not re-baseline to make a late project look on time. If the date is going to be missed and nothing has been agreed, the honest state is "at risk" or "off track" against the original baseline, and the conversation with whoever was promised the work comes first. A re-baseline records an agreement; it does not replace one.
What a re-baseline has to carry
Three things. The new terms: outcome, dates, and capacity re-agreed with each delivering team, because a new date on old capacity is a wish. The reason, in a sentence someone outside the project can follow. And the original, untouched, so the record shows both what was first promised and what it became.
The count matters as much as the content. One re-baseline with a clear reason is planning. A commitment on its fourth is telling you the first one was made before anyone knew enough, which is a finding about how commitments get made, and worth more than the project it came from.
Related terms
- Delivery outcome
A delivery outcome is the explicit close of a commitment: what actually shipped, and — when the result is not a clean delivery — what differed from the promise.
- RAG status
A RAG status is a traffic-light health signal on delivery — on track, at risk, off track — that is a judgement by the person accountable, not a computation, and is only worth reading when the reasoning comes with it.
- Honest close
An honest close ends a commitment by comparison rather than checkbox: delivered as committed, delivered with named differences, or not delivered — the difference recorded in words whenever the result was not clean.
This definition comes from building DeliverySheet — it takes a vague work request to a clear delivery decision, so the shape, owner, capacity, dependencies and open questions are on the table before anyone commits people or a date.
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