Baselines & variance
Capturing a baseline, the three rules that make one worth arguing from, the variance columns, and why a row outside a partial baseline reports as unbaselined rather than on plan.
A baseline is what you said you would do. It is the one place in Sequence where a derived value is deliberately frozen and stored rather than recomputed — everywhere else a stored derived value is a bug, and here it is the entire point. "What did we say we would do" cannot be recomputed from today's inputs.
Three rules#
1. Immutable once taken. Re-baselining creates a new baseline; the old one is never overwritten. A baseline is what a delay claim is argued against, so a baseline that can be edited is worth nothing in the argument.
2. Named, timestamped and attributed. "Baseline" tells you nothing six months on. Rev C — approved 2026-03-14 does. The name is required and the capture records who took it and when.
3. A partial baseline records what it covered. Baselining a selection is legitimate. Rows outside it report as unbaselined, never as zero variance — zero variance means "on plan", no baseline means "we never said", and conflating them is how a schedule reports itself healthy for work nobody ever planned.
What is captured#
Per row: start, finish, duration in working days as the engine computed it at capture, and cost.
⚠ Baseline cost is nullable, and null is not zero. A baseline taken before the schedule was priced captured no cost. Storing zero would make planned value read "this work was planned to cost nothing", which reports a variance of the entire budget rather than an absent baseline. Baselines captured before costing existed load as uncosted rather than as free.
Variance#
Every baselined row reports one of four states:
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| On plan | Within tolerance of the baseline |
| Late | Finishing after the baseline finish |
| Early | Finishing before it |
| Unbaselined | This row was not in the baseline |
The baseline columns — baseline start, baseline finish, baseline duration, baseline cost, and the variances against each — are available in the grid, in filters and in conditional formatting rules, so "colour everything more than five days late" is a rule rather than a report.
Where else a baseline is used#
- Quality checks points 11 and 14 both need one, and report not-applicable without it.
- Alerts include a baseline-slip rule.
- Earned value takes its budget from the baselined cost.