Gantt Baselines: Planned vs Current Schedule
A baseline preserves the approved plan so users can see what changed after work began. Without it, the current Gantt may look coherent while hiding weeks of accumulated slippage.
Baseline data and visual behavior
At minimum, store planned start and finish for each task. Depending on the product, a baseline may also preserve duration, work, cost, milestone dates, or summary values. The current schedule stays editable; the baseline remains a comparison snapshot until an authorized user deliberately replaces it.
RevoGrid Gantt supports baseline data and overlays so planned bars can appear alongside current task bars. The editable grid can also expose planned dates and calculated variance as columns.
Design baseline workflows, not only baseline bars
A production implementation should answer:
- who can capture or replace a baseline;
- whether the product supports one approved baseline or several snapshots;
- what happens to new, deleted, or split tasks;
- how summary variance is calculated;
- whether imported projects preserve baseline identifiers;
- how timezone and calendar changes affect comparisons;
- whether baseline changes need audit history or approval.
Avoid silently overwriting planned dates when users drag the current task bar. That destroys the comparison the feature exists to provide.
Use baselines with critical path and progress
Baseline variance says the schedule moved; critical path analysis helps explain whether the movement affects completion. Progress and actual dates show what has happened in execution. Used together, these views help teams distinguish harmless resequencing from delivery risk.
Try the baseline toggle in the live RevoGrid Gantt demo. Continue with critical path analysis, resource scheduling, or the full Gantt product and pricing page.
Gantt baseline FAQ
What is a Gantt baseline?
It is an approved schedule snapshot used to compare original planned dates with the current forecast or actual results.
Should current edits update the baseline?
No. Baseline replacement should be an explicit, permissioned action; routine schedule editing should preserve the approved comparison.