The Philosophy Behind S-Curves

s-curves hmm what color is an s-curve if it occurred with the shape of an S what kind of chair is an s-curve anyway my project managers are so interested in seeing s curves in your project reports what's the use of s curves in projects these are my questions when I first exposed to the term s curves in products I didn't know the use of s curves until I started populating as curving every single project cost and schedule that I issued I realize how this simple graphical tool is useful in bracing stakeholders on understanding the project status and trends in a very quick and intuitive manner hello everyone I am sorry Gurbani I'm the founder and director of project control Academy and Academy for learning and enhancing your skills in project controls in this training I'm going to open up the concept of s curves for you so you are here on the philosophy behind s curve why it's called an S curve what's the use of rescheduling projects and much more now going back to my earlier question what is an S curve what is your understanding of s curve is it the first time we are hearing this term if not what do you think of the S curve without knowing anything about it okay let me define s curves for you so you are more here on what you're talking about here so if curve is a graphical display of punitive data that is plotted against time and that cumulative data here can be anything such as cost man or quantity progress different type of project informations that you want to plot against time and don't forget s curve the cumulative plot unit of data that you plot against time and you may find s-curve as other names you might aim at college s plot or another name cumulative distribution chart or velocity diagram or in air environment when they call it performance measurement baseline or PMD so don't be surprised if you name it other things in projects that you have been working on but the bottom line is you're drawing an s-curve in projects now why the name is an s-curve is it in a shape of an F the answer is yes a scale form a shape of s in most projects so the F shape the shallow s is a typical shape of a cumulative graph that you will see in projects and the reason is if I just plot the incremental data in a project for you so you understand why the cumulative data shows like an S curve is because in most projects you start very slowly in their project and then you ramp up a junior project execution and then you run down as you close out the project and deliver most of the deliverables and basically finishing the project so you will see that as a typical shape in most projects so if I convert this to a cumulative curve then that would be something like two F curve that you see here on the orange bar here so that's why it creates an F shape for you based on the essence of their projects but having said that don't be surprised if your s curve the cumulative care that you draw in a project does not look like an F shape the shape of an S curve you know depends on the nature of your project what kind of contract you are working on and depending on the project you might see different types of s curves one of the most popular ones that you will see is front-loaded s curve and you can see here in this graph most resources are consumed early on in that in the project and then you ramping down very quickly toward the end and needle but most of the load is at the beginning of the project examples that would be the projects that are accelerated early on so something happens and you're just accelerating that project quickly early on you put in a lot of resources at the beginning of the project to finish the project based on the contract requirement so then you will end up a chair like a doe minidom have them rather than an s-shape because you have a front loaded plan in your project another example would be for repetitive projects you know something that you have a project that you have done over and over and over again so you are quite familiar with that so you don't need that much of learning curve at the beginning of the project so you know what to do so you just put resources earlier on and finishing the job as quickly as you can so that's another example of front-loaded plans that you will see in a project and another example would be for an urgent quick repair of a damaged early on in the project that you need to you know have resources to repair that damage so you will put a lot of resources early on to to repair that so that would be another example of a front loaded s-curve and if you are drawing a cost information the mobilization cost or you know the deposits that you put for some procurement items then that would have the tendency of creating an S shape for your cash flow curve as well so these are some examples of the project that you mean you may see forming and s front-loaded s curve but having said that make sure that you if you end up with a front-loaded S curve evaluate first of all whether you have resources available early on in the project to execute your project like this and second is your plan valid is this the project that you are really putting a lot of resources early on in the project execution so you have to validate your plan and validate the available resources that you're going that they're going to execute your project so make sure you validate this before accepting this S curve as your plan for the project another form of S curve that you will see which is completely opposite of this curve is a back loaded s curve so as I can see this one started very slowly here on the project and then aid ramped up toward the end of the project and examples of this type of back loaded s curves would be complex projects you know projects that you need a lot of planning and design early on so it takes a lot of learning curve basically before you jump into execution and start executing the job so that would be an example of a back loaded s curve that you may face just like some loaded s curves make sure that you validate the basis of your plan and availability of your resources and again you have to question the back loaded or front loaded s curves in projects to make sure your plan is right so to give you a perspective of these three teachers I put them all in one graph for you so you can clearly understand the difference between the front loaded back loaded and a typical S curve and here is their the care of three of them in one curve as you can see that's the front load that s care kind of very sharp curve as I'd like to call it a half dome curve this is the back loaded curve again it just starts very slowly and ramp up toward the end but the green one is the typical S curve kind of a shallow if type curve that you will see in most projects so again make sure that you validate your plan for both front loaded and back loaded chips before you accept them as a baseline or a plan moving forward for comparison so these were different shapes of s-curve that you will see in a project depending on the nature of your project now the question might be what kind of information should I plot in an s-curve first of all the x-axis would always show your time and the time the intervals that would be based on your project reporting and updating cycle so if you are doing your updating project updating or reporting every month then it would be on a monthly basis kind of months or it can be by weekly or weekly so the shorter these time intervals you know the smoother your s curve would be and the easier for analyzing the trends in your project the y-axis always shows accumulative data and the cumulative data can be different data that you want to show and plot in a project it can be man overcast FTE progress quantity resources different types of information that we want to analyze in a project but among all of those the three most common type of s curves that you will see in projects are these tree you may see a cost s curve which is basically your cost versus time and this curve is very popular for cash flow teachers they're kind of showing the spending of your budget over time how you're going to spend your budget over time or cash flow curve another popular S curve that you will use in projects is a man over or FTE futon equivalent curve basically showing the available resources that you have over time either the head counts or man-hour again that's very popular you will see that a lot as well another type of s-curve that you will see in project is quantity s curve so here would be a quantity of natural equipment or something that you want measure against time and that's a very good chair for comparison comparing what you were planning in terms of quantity and what you actually accomplished or let's say install an equipment or something so that would be a very good comparison care of that he will use in project so these are the three most common typical esker's that you will use in most of the project control reports them that you will basically see out there now going back to my earlier question what is the use of air scarce my project managers are so interested in seeing these s curve in their project reports that lead us to the next topic in the S curve series training on what is the common use and utilization of s curves which I am going to cover in the next episode of project control mastery so stay tuned for the next episode so I will show you different ways of using s curves in project reports and with that if you have any questions or comment about these episode please make sure that you drop them down below so I can assist you I hope this quick training helped you to better understand the concept of s curve and the philosophy behind s curve I hope it added value if you like this training please give me a high five by hitting the like button and if you know someone would benefit from this training please don't hesitate to share it with your connections or your colleagues so until the next episode of project control mastery where I'm going to open up the concept of s curve even more for you do your best in everything that you do my friend commit to excellence in your work and make a difference [Music] hello this is sherry I hope you enjoyed this episode make sure that you subscribe to this channel so you continue to get updates every time that I release new training for you simply hit the subscribe button and you will be all set if you have ever wondered or wanted to learn how to become distinguished for your ability to control and deed projects to a successful completion I like to give you something special that I'm sure you're going to love I have developed series of training videos on air and value management absolutely for free yes for free if you have ever wondered what any value management is and how it can assist you in understanding the true status of your projects make sure that you watch the EDM training series that I have put together for you just click on the link below this 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Channel: Project Control Academy

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Keywords: project control, project control training, project control academy, s-curve, what is scurve, scurve, s-curve shape, s-curve type, s cuve definition, s curve in project management, s curve graph, s plot, velocity diagram, s curve example, shohreh ghorbani, s-curve project management, s-curve method, s-curves, s curve, project controls, s-curve in excel, s-curve in primavera p6, s shaped curve, s curve graph project management

Id: 2s6SEYvRdvc

Length: 14min 38sec (878 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 19 2017