Early/Act/Late S-curves possible without resources?

AACE provides a nice Recommended Practice called, Analyzing S-Curves.  It is available free at http://www.aacei.org/resources/rp/.  I recommend it.  Good luck!

Good software shall allow you to generate S Curves for resources as well as for Cost Components as well as for Cost Centers without the need of some manipulation through dummy resources. As a matter of fact Cost/Money as well as Labor, Materials, Equipment etc are resources. Costs by themselves are resources, no need for dummy resources!

The generation of Cost S Curves shall not be mixed with resources as it would be very inefficient. Just imagine having hundreds of cost accounts and you want to see the histogram or time scaled graph of each cost account or of a group [Cost Center].

I cannot imagine software that depends on dummy resources to generate Cost S Curves.

Another thing good software shall be able to do is to generate S Curves by WBS, but not by a single WBS as if there is an absolute WBS tha works for everything, for everyone, universal for all needs. Such thing as a universal WBS does not exist and pretendig it can is in error. Your software shall be able to keep multiple WBS dictionaries, at time a WBS dictionary for Earned Value S Curves as required for your client [or Government Agency] and a few others that fit how your organization have standarized your WBS.

One thing you should verify is if your software display of histogram data to the left of DD is not dependent on postings of pre-defined period performance as it might yield wrong values; if for example you set up financial periods to be monthly while the histogram is displayed on weekly periods, such software might do wrong math.

you can buy "S curves V2" VBA EXCEL application: http://www.cubixpm-scurves.com/en/

it allows to :

• Create 26 S curves (baseline early and late, physical progress) in automatic connection with a MS PROJECT or PRIMAVERA P6 schedule.
• Spread the weights in a linear or Gaussian way over the tasks of schedule.
• Create S curves with 3 criteria, on the basis of 5 task codes.
• Manage a schedule up to 10,000 tasks.

BR, Jean-Yves Moine.