MS Project S-Curves.

Microsoft Project Standard will not produce S Curves but will produce Histograms and tables.

There are some add on products available that will produce S Curves.

I do as most people, I export to Excel.

Paul E Harris
Eastwood Harris Pty Ltd
Planning and Scheduling Book Publishers
www.eh.com.au

Yes, I agree with Paul.

That is the normal industry standard. However there are many advanced ways of producing the Progress curves with a doc. called as Turn around Doc in excel form in present days. Which forms a better tool to prepare the Shortfall analysis of a project.
Bye!
PK

I desperately need help. I worked with a guy who had the most fantastic XL spread sheet with macros which he used to make very nice s curves with data copied from MSP 2000.
He used early and late starts to create an envelope, the actual curve is then plotted and is supposed to stay within the early and late dates. Then he also had a forcast as well.

Has anyone got an Excel template which they are prepared to share with me?

Heinrich

Producing S-Curves for turnarounds that have targets based upon the schedule are problematic. This is because the scope for turnarounds is not completely known at the start of the project. The scope is variable and will change over the course of time as inspections are performed.

We have measured S-Curves against baseline schedules, "moving" schedules and a historical target curve based on timeframe. Invariably the historical target curve yields the most meaningful results for turnarounds.

Bernard Ertl
InterPlan Systems - ATC Professional Shutdown / Turnaround Management System

MSP can produce S-curve. First you prepare Histogram and then go to Farmat and then click bar style ther you will find out show as "bar" that you can change in line and you will get line curve. That you can print.

Unfortunately, MS-Project CANNOT produce stricto sensu S-Curves.
You actually can set-up the resource graph from bars to lines, but you will not produce any s-curve, only line graphs that display work charge OR costs.
To get proper S-Curves, you will use either MS-Project server with OLAP functionalities or MS-Excel.
All the best

Looking to create an s-curve in excell, what info do I nned to extract from MS Project?

Most probably: scheduled duration, work and cost, actual duration, work and cost.
The easiest way to select data is to use the macro "Analyze timescaled data in Excel", available from the Analysis toolbar.
All the best

merci beaucoup!

Hi Scott

I think the most improtant thing which you need to have from MS Project is that you should have schedule and actual progress trend, which u are suppose to get from putting values of actual project progress against the baseline scheduled duration in "Tracking Gantt" option in MS-Project.

Basically, Schedule v/s actual > Time, cost, duration, %age progress & %age Resource Utilization.

As S Curve is based on weighted base calculation, the most important thing is resource and unit manhours required to liquidate the particular scope quantity and get the earned manhours for the progress trend.

All the best

DecisionEdge (my company) has a new software tool that can create S-Curves right from within Microsoft Project (no need to export to Excel).

It is called DecisionCharts for Microsoft Project and you can download a 30-day evaluation to see for yourself: DecisionCharts for Microsoft Project

DecisionCharts comes with 60+ new bundled charts built specifically for Microsoft Project. If you don’t see the exact chart you want, just let me know and we can create it (we can pull data directly from MSP and show it in a chart - and we also can do complex custom calculations to create new curves).

Botton Line: There’s no reason you should be using Excel to create the charts you need out of Microsoft Project.

Regards,
John Garay
DecisionEdge, Inc.
jgaray@decisionedge.com
http://www.decisionedge.com

Thanks John...

This is great, i,ve worked with MS project for years but never used this reporting method.

 

Have a look at Project Tracker, you can generate your S Curves directly from Microsoft Project. Go to https://www.willmer.co.uk/project-tracker for more information and to get a free trial.