Whether to use pure composite baselines

Many projects or project organizations need the flexibility provided by using pure composite baselines. Pure composite baselines are better in the following situations:
  • If baseline conflicts occur.
  • The project needs a lateral rebase operation to configure baselines from outside the project.

However, a project that does not include overlapping composite baselines will not have conflicts. Also, in development teams where projects are release-oriented, a project is likely to only need baselines from the previous project, and so the rebase flexibility is not needed.

To avoid using pure composite baselines, a project integrator can ensure that the subsystems stay synchronized with the shared components. When a new baseline is created on a shared component, all consuming projects would release a new baseline for their subsystem based on the new baseline. This frequent updating and rebasing prevent baseline conflicts. Such overhead is likely to be feasible only for projects with a small number of shared components.