Summary Level Planning Packages (SLPPs) are used to establish high level holding accounts for budget that is identified to some work scope, but which, for business reasons, is not yet ready to be planned in detail so, has not yet been allocated to Control Accounts (CAs). A difference of the SLPP, when compared to Management Reserve (MR) or Undistributed Budget (UB), is that the SLPP budget is identified with specific work scope and it is time-phased for interim resource planning.

From the Total Allocated Budget (TAB), most contractors first set aside a small percentage for MR to cover unknown unknowns. The remaining budget becomes the Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB). The PMB consists of three elements. The first is the UB. This is a temporary holding budget that should be allocated as soon as practical to either the second PMB element, SLPPs, or to the third and final PMB element, CAs. The SLPP is traditionally established for far term work.

Early in a contract, it would be unreasonable to expect a detailed CA with Work Package (WP) descriptions and detailed schedules for something that had yet to be designed. So, a top level budget and schedule are established and the SLPP serves this function. For near term and well defined work, earned value CAs are established. A CA may have hundreds of WPs and PPs. An EVM concept called a rolling wave is often used to move work from SLPPs to CAs and from CA PPs to CA WPs.