Is the rollout slowing, or does it just feel slow?
Eight monthly readings of a store rollout that ran fast in the middle and is slowing down. The forecast is drawn from the most recent four readings, which is why the same rollout answered this question very differently two months ago.
Operations Intermediate S-Curve Pro engine
After you install, this is the model to open.
Is the Rollout Where It Should Be by Now?
- In your spreadsheet, click the Sortia icon in the strip of icons down the right-hand edge. No strip? Click the arrow at the bottom-right to open it. You can also use Extensions, then Sortia, then Open Sortia.
- Click Start from a template and put that name in the search box.
- Pick the card with that name and click Load this template. It arrives on a new tab with real numbers already in it.
This one runs on a Pro engine, and every free install includes five full-quality runs on your own numbers, shared across all five Pro engines rather than five for each. After that, Pro is $199/year.
The answer
- Forecast finish
- July 2027 the fitted S-curve reaches 100% in the first week
- Live today
- 40 of 60 stores, 67% complete at the August reading
- The pace has turned
- 2 stores added last month, against 8 a month in the spring
- Two months ago it said
- January 2027 the same question asked on the June readings
Eight monthly readings of a 60-store point-of-sale rollout, cumulative, from three stores live in January to forty live at the end of August. Look at the increments before you run anything: 8, 8, 5, 4 and then 2 stores in the last month. This rollout went through its fast middle in the spring and has been slowing since June, which is what rollouts do once the easy sites are done and what is left is the awkward ones.
Click Run. The tool fits an S-curve to the history and projects it forward, and the forecast reaches 100% in the first week of July 2027, about ten months away for the last twenty stores. There is one thing to understand about that date before you quote it, and it is the most useful thing in this template. The pace behind the projection is not the average pace of the whole rollout.
It is drawn from the most recent four readings, weighted so the latest counts most, and here that comes out at about 1.5% of the estate a week. That is a deliberate design and it is the right one, because a rollout that has changed pace should be forecast from its new pace rather than from its history. But it means the answer is sensitive to the last two months in a way a smooth curve does not advertise.
Prove it in one run. Delete the July and August readings and run the same sheet again, which is exactly the report you would have produced at the end of June with the rollout at 57%. The pace comes out at 2.55% a week and the forecast finishes in the second week of January 2027, nearly six months earlier. Two extra months of data moved the completion date by half a year and nothing in the plan changed.
That is the honest reading of this instrument: it is a monthly measurement, not a commitment, and if you quoted the June answer to a board you now owe them an update. Turn on Show all three curves for the second half of the answer. The three shapes bracket the finish from early May 2027 on the steeper curve to the back half of September 2027 on the flatter one, about four months wide on the data you have today.
Quote the bracket, not the point. If you would rather be deliberately cautious, set the buffer to 15% and the single-curve forecast moves out to late August 2027, which is what holding back a sixth of the pace as a cushion looks like. What this cannot tell you is why the pace changed. The curve sees the deceleration and has no idea whether it is hard sites, an installer shortage or a hardware backlog, and those three have completely different answers.
Use the forecast to decide whether the question is urgent, then go and ask it. To adapt it, keep dates in the first column and cumulative completion as a decimal in the second, keep the reporting interval regular, and add a row every period rather than rebuilding the sheet.
The model
It arrives on a tab called Template: Rollout Curve:
| Date | Complete (fraction, 0-1) |
| 2026-01-30 | 0.05 |
| 2026-02-27 | 0.12 |
| 2026-03-31 | 0.22 |
| 2026-04-30 | 0.35 |
| 2026-05-29 | 0.48 |
| 2026-06-30 | 0.57 |
| 2026-07-31 | 0.63 |
| 2026-08-31 | 0.67 |
Once it is in your sheet
- The model arrives with real numbers in it and runs as it stands, so you can press the button first and understand it second.
- Change the numbers to yours. The sheet marks which cells are inputs and which hold formulas, and most labels carry a note explaining the row.
- Press the run button at the bottom of the panel. It is labeled for the tool you are in, and the result lands on its own tab, with a written reading of it beside the figures.
Never used Google Sheets? Start here goes the whole way, in seven steps, and assumes nothing.
Next question
- Will your shrink budget survive one bad incident?What Is Shrinkage Really Costing?
- How often does this store miss its number?Will This Store Make Its Year?
- Did the change work, or do your lines just differ?Did the New Process Actually Help?
- How many tickets before the event breaks even?Will the Event Make Money?
- What on-time rate can you actually promise?Will We Hit the Delivery Promise?
- The higher price lost. Did it make more money?Two Prices, One Answer
Every model like this one, and the method behind them: Schedule risk analysis.