S Curve for Multiple Projects

An S-curve is defined as: "A display of cumulative costs, labor hours or other quantities plotted against time. The name derives from the S-like shape of the curve, flatter at the beginning and end and steeper in the middle, which is typical of most projects.But at present Oracle is being used.

Sharon,

For your information:

S-curves were defined and widely used long before Oracle Primavera was created.

An S-Curve is defined as "a display of cumulative costs, labor hours or other quantities plotted against time. for the Oracle primavera. 

An S-Curve is defined as "a display of cumulative costs, labor hours or other quantities plotted against time. for the Oracle primavera. 

You shall compare apples to apples.  You shall compare each job to different versions of its own such as current versus its own baseline and another scenario of concern.  Comparing a job to different jobs does not make much sense.  The value of portfolio management is not to create a 500 pages report every month, the real value is on accounting for the impact of their sharing of resources.  In portfolio management usually it is financial constraints [cash flow] the driving resource that must be leveled; easy, without the necessary funds some or all jobs will stop until funds are replenished.

Usually portfolios are composed of many projects, 3 jobs is just a handful of many, perhaps hundreds.  If using Portfolio Management it is so easy to create a view that shows Early and Late S Curves for all jobs Current and Contractual Baseline for each job as well as for the combined Portfolio.  At a single click just select the view and everything will be there.

• I understood by your reply Early and Late S Curves for only up to 3 projects, am I right?
• If a Program Manager how would you suggest to report every month for all jobs within a single report?

you can use any projects to compare against the current schedule 

I understand we are talking about MULTIPLE PROJECTS not different versions of the same project.

Do you mean?

current schedule = Project 1

project baseline  = Project 2

seconday baseline  = Project 3

Is it a good idea to assign baselines using different project schedules?

And what about Project 4, 5 ...?

Also remember to display Early as well as Late S Curves, otherwise you will be showing 50% of the S Curves.

yes 

you have your current schedule cost curve 1

now assign a project baseline

now assign a seconday baseline

go to activitiy useage profile

and select Baseline

Budgeted

Remaining 

I am exporting to Excel from within the scheduling software [Spider Project].  You should be able to export to Excel within P6 with a single click of the mouse as you can do it with most other scheduling software by clicking on the Excel icon, by todays standards a no brainer.

Another way can be to select the range with the cursor within the report and copy paste into an Excel worksheet.

If you create a schedule report template then repeating the process will be even easier.

The video was done using a very simple portfolio for illustration only where all jobs start at same date but it can be any other portfolio where jobs start at different dates and have some progress.  Also it might be good to always include late S Curves as they are generally required to be shown.

After some editing of the Excel Chart it might be convenient to save it as an Excel Template.

I prefer showing a separate chart for every job where Early and Late S Curves for Current and Baseline are displayed. Showing different jobs’ S Curves on the same chart can be overwhelming.

I have a preference to include some buffer into my jobs as the deterministic models are usually too optimistic and doomed to failure if there is no buffer.  But buffer got to be managed. At the beginning of a job 20 days buffer might be good enough but at the end only a fraction is needed.

For buffer management I prefer using probabilistic methods and keep tracking the probabilities by showing in same chart the Probabilities of Success S Curves for the various versions of same job.

The most valuable of S Curves are the Probabilities of Success [S Curves].

Good Luck

S Curves for multiple jobs can easily be created by creating tabular reports from Portfolio, exporting the reports to excel and create the chart.

I do not use P6 but believe the procedure shall be similar, so easy!

Good Luck