The “hockey stick graph” is a graph which shows slow initial growth, followed by a rapid linear increase. The resulting shape resembles a hockey stick, with the blade of the stick represented by the nearly-flat initial section, and the handle of the stick represented by the rapid linear increase once sales take off.

All sales forecasts have this hockey stick shape because the people who do sales forecasts are all optimists.

The Microsoft finance division has their own variation on the hockey stick: The hockey stick on wheels.

Consider a team which presents their forecasts in the form of a hockey stick graph. They come back the next year with their revised forecasts, and they are the same as last year’s forecast, just delayed one year. If you overlay this revised hockey stick forecast on top of the previous year’s forecast, it looks like what happened is that the hockey stick slid forward one year. When this happens, the finance people jokingly call it a “hockey stick on wheels” because it looks like somebody bolted wheels onto the bottom of the hockey stick graph and is just rolling it forward by one year each year.

Net profit, net profit.
I love ya, net profit.
You’re always a year away.

An example of a hockey stick on wheels is the first few years of the infamous Itanium sales forecast chart. Notice that the first four lines are basically the same, just shifted forward by one year. It is only at the fifth year that the shape of the line changes.