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The output of the Develop Schedule should be obvious from the title of the process, in other words, the schedule, but PMI has something called the schedule baseline, the project schedule, and schedule data as outputs.

Before I discuss the other outputs of this process, I wanted to clarify some terminology PMI uses.   What is the “schedule model” and what is the relationship between it, the schedule data, and the project schedule?

Remember, you will be using the Project Management Information System or PMIS as a tool of this process, an example of which is Microsoft Project.   It is a computer program, and the project data is the input to the program.    This includes the schedule activities and activity attributes, the outputs of process 6.2 Define Activities and 6.3 Schedule Activities.   It contains information on assumptions that affect best-case and worst-case scenarios, which can affect the “optimistic” and “pessimistic” estimates for any given “most likely estimate”.

Once you use the software on the schedule data, using the schedule network analysis technique of the process, you get the schedule model , the output of the PMIS.   It is called the “model” because it is not written in stone:   it is based on the assumptions that you put into it, and if the assumptions change or new ones become uncovered in the planning process, then the schedule model may change as well.   The current version of the schedule model is called the “schedule baseline.”

With this discussion of PMI terminology out of the way, let’s talk in the next post about the outputs of this process.

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