I Love S-Curves

S-Curve – A helpful Tool for Project Planning and Project Progress Reporting

I have a weakness for S-Curves and have incorporated them in the reporting packages I have developed for MS Project and MS Project Server, but hell the theory of S-Curves is not new, I didn�t invent them. S-Curves have been used as a charting and graphical tool for many decades for various purposes. They are also not new to Project Management and are typically used to plot project effort against time and budget against actual cost. But here comes the attention-grabbing bit – I believe however that they have been under-utilised as a project management reporting tool.

They provide a very effectual visual method for viewing the planned effort over the course of the project and for ongoing reporting of actual against plan and of course against baseline (original and current). S-Curves provide a graphical vehicle for project reporting, by plotting cumulative effort against time. The resulting curve should resemble an S in shape

The Project Baseline, the current plan and the current actual progress to-date can all be plotted on the one chart. This will unmistakably highlight differences between the baseline, the current plan, and actual progress to-date, enabling corrective or remediation action to be taken early.

Correctly constructing and analysing an S-Curve representing your project schedule can tell you a lot about how your project deliverables and resource assignments have been scheduled. In particular the shape of the curve can provide visual feed-back on your project planning by highlighting potential problems with your planning.

S-Curves are a very useful tool for initial planning of your project and also for reporting progress against the plan or baseline. Analysis of “Actual Progress To-date Curve”