Dear Vladimir,

Thank you very much, the instructions to navigate the site worked.

With kind regards,

Samer

Dear Samer,
I copied the link and pasted into the web address in my browser. It worked. But if the problem remains go to www.spiderproject.ru, select English, and the Publications.
The reference was made to the third from the top: Success Driven Project Management Methodology (PMI Great Lakes Chapter Conference).
There are other publications there that may be of interest to you. I will be glad to discuss any approach suggested in these publications.

Best Regards,
Vladimir

Dear Vladimir,

Would you be so kind and assist in re-writing the link below without the % in it. Because the mentioned link might not be working.

With kind regards,

Samer

Hi Vladimir,

"S-curves and manpower histograms do not show trends"

How do you best represents planned progress or planned percentage progress (may it be early or late)?

On what form or chart do you use?

cheers

Hi Daniel / Rola,

The fundamental in Project Control is to know the Contract Scope of Work, the deliverables. From this information, a plan can be work out. At the early stage, it can be a road map. Then, a schedule can be developed. A Gantt Charts is used to represent the schedule.
The bars in the Gantt Charts that represents activities must be systematically and painstakingly analyst to arrive at duration estimates, resource allocation and weight allocation. This is the stage wherein the downstream products may have effective meaning because if these are done haphazardly, all efforts may end up GIGO rule (garbage in and garbage out) consequently, waste of time and money.
Anyway, for the sake of this thread in this forum, to continue…
Having arrived at duration estimates, resource allocation and weight allocation, the activities in the Gantt Charts must be logically linked. To achieve quality, only one activity will have no successors, and only one activity will have no predecessor. In this way there will be no open ended activities. Also minimize the used of constraints since constraints artificially interfere with the logic.
Then, this is now the climax of a good work done.
Run the schedule, press F9 in Primavera.
You have now planned periodic values and planned cumulative values.
These periodic values and cumulative values are used in generating Resource Histogram, S-curve, by transposing to MS Excel since the graphical capability of MS Excel is superior compared to other user friendly software.

Having said that, the next important activity of a project control professional is to monitor the actual, what really actually happen: Is it according to plan (mostly it is not)? How much is the differences? If your project has consumed 25% of the time, then, you have a database to used in predicting future events.
To be continued since I have lots of work to do…

GB, PTL, TY
Scarlett

Hi Vladimir,

Can you please give some examples of "Trend Charts" or "Trend Analysis"? Aren’t S-curves or manpower histograms can be considered trend charts?

cheers

Daniel,

A few things…there are S-Curves for Manhours there are S-Curves for commodities and you are right that the S-Curve becomes useless if the Trended/Revised Budget are quite different to Original Budget.

A way around is to develop
1.S-curves based on % completion and not the manhours
2.Or we can generate the S-Curves on manhours/qty but if there is a change in qty add a revised S-curve and superimpose on the baseline S-Curve and measure the progress and variance from that.
In project controls we have to change our stance throughout the duration of the project. New reports are prepared older are scrapped…don’t you think it is similar to why we keep on deleting old links and adding new during a schedule update.

Thanks
Regards
Rashid

Hi Scarlett,
I did not mean that S curve is not useful.
S curves, like Gantt Charts, Time-Location Charts, Resource Histograms, Earned Value reports, Trend Charts - are powerful tools for project analysis. But all of them are the results of your planning and monitoring, reports generated by your project model.
They are not planning but analysis tools.

As for progress analysis we pay most attention to trend analysis that provides project planners with early warnings of potential problems. Other reports give the information on project status.
To make informed decisions it is necessary to understand both - status and trends.

Best Regards,
Vladimir

Rola,
The S Curve is merely a representation of all of your data.
I think it would be a brave person that attempts to achieve the "Perfect" S curve shape every time.

Fact of the matter is that for many of the activities within a schedule it is too hard to confirm the rate at which effort &/or resources will be expended over time. As Planners we simply use experience to determine the ’Most Likely’ outcome of each of our activities, and let this roll up.

I tend to worry less about the individual resource loading at the activity itself, and more about sequence, duration and budget assigned to the activity. At the end of the day when an activity starts you have no control over how the resources are expended, and the bigger the activity the less control you do have. The smaller the activity the more hours YOU will have to put into managing the schedule progress and change.

As with all things there is a balance. If the curve looks funny or just plain wrong, then there is a reason. Look for that reason using the various structures you have created, WBS, RBS, code fields etc etc. When you find a reason for it you will then need to determine the value of mitigating or changing the schedule to fix these anomalies.

Ensure you engage the PM and the various supervisors and leads that should have provided review and sign off of the activity list, durations, budgets and sequence for the schedule. They may be able to assist in the clarification of any and all things that concern you.

When it’s all said and done, all the planning effort in the world is of no help what-so-ever as soon as the first hour is booked to the project. All bets are off and you need to manage the job to completion from there. Of course without a well-defined plan that is understood and agreed to by the entire team then all the schedule management in the world won’t do you a bit of good as everyone will be working to their own plan and not care about the initial plan.

A schedule that is not supported by the project delivery team is basically going to end up a mystery within a riddle wrapped in an enigma.

Oh how I love a good conundrum.

Andy

Dear All,

When we plot the S Curve, we use numbers. These numbers are representing two criteria; say progress and time. Once we plot the numbers we have and connect the dots, we have a curve.

The laws of mathematics apply to the numbers and curves explanation. Management comes in to relate the actual situation to what is going on at site.

It is a tool to monitor what we are managing because evidently the numbers are important to complete the project.

With kind regards,

Samer

Dear Scarllet,

A little bit of googling into S-curve:

http://www.icsb.org/wiki/index.php?title=S_curve

"The S curve is used to study a lot of natural processes and complex system. The logistic equation was published for the first time in 1838 by P. F. Verhulst, a belgian mathematician, than it was rediscovered in 1920 by Raymond Pearl and Lowell Reed. "

Its a nice reading.

But I keep woundering why we keep using 200 year old math! Imagine what can happen if we use the current capabilities of mathematicians in our construction!

With kind regards,

Samer

Hi Vladimir,

Refer to your statement:
S-curve is just one of many reports that may be created, nothing else. I beg to disagree
S shape is typical for cumulative charts for project costs and resource quantities. Agreed
If data are not cumulative the graphs have bell shape. Agreed

I beg to disagree because it is nothing else
There is more on what the S-curve tells us with regards to the present state of the project. Progress S-curve is one of the most important graphical representations of project status. I can also be used in CDR (claim dispute resolution). S-curve can be combined with project database and robust analysis will give us the trend on where the project is heading. This will help project management team to acts and intervene in case where slippage is not anymore within acceptable level. It will also give guidance on project turn around.

In conclusion, S-curve is not a “nothing else”. It is one of the most powerful tools in project management.

Of course since we are in a forum with the most intelligent planning engineers in this planet, perhaps, if you have the time, maybe you can elaborate on why you say S-curve is … “nothing else”. This may give you an opportunity to convey the power of Spider capability other than generating S-curve or there may be other more important component relative to progress reporting in project management other than S-curve.

GB, PTL, TY
Scarlett