Responsible authority

Background

Objectives

When baseline data is shared by several initiatives, then those initiatives can make use of it for improved two-way communication with their stakeholders.

Stakeholders can in one place share their insights on their situation, and validate or comment upon related assumptions by project participants.

Advocates of new initiatives for a particular area can via the baseline identify the ongoing initiatives. This will help them in avoiding double or parallel work, or in identifying prior work or resources on which they could build.

Scope

The actors, processes and resources in a delineated socio-technical area.

Constraints

Fact finding and documentation may be constrained by certain factors. These can be described here.

Interfaces

To other baselines and to initiatives making use of the baseline.

User's quality expectations

Here one could express the quality levels that are anticipated in the baseline work. As more or higher-cost initiatives are relying upon the baseline, then a higher quality can be expected.

Outline of the business case

The reason for a baseline outside of a project is that baseline facts are often of value to multiple initiatives (programmes and projects). If each of these initiatives — singly and severally — gathers baseline data, then the quality of the baseline data may suffer.