SPI is way too high

[Brian Lukanic]

I have a Baselined Project.

In doing some "what-if" scenarios for tasks that are scheduled to occur well
into the future, I assign 100% complete to a task that is 3 months out. The
resulting SPI value for it and its summary task shoots up well beyond a value
of 1; I'm talking goofy numbers like 13, 27.xx, etc.

My feeling with SPI is that a get-ahead task should still result only in a
value of 1 - that's the ceiling no matter how early something gets done. Is
this a fair expectation to have? Does Project behave differently? If so, is
there any way to configure Project so that anything above 1 gets "rounded
down" to 1?

 

[Steve House]

If today is the status date and a task that was originally scheduled to
start at some point out in the future has in fact actually had work done on
it, that work must have been done before today (to do otherwise would
require a time machine capable of transporting resources into the future -
got one handy?). If work has been done 'prematurely' like that, you need to
insure that the task, or at least the portion of its work that has actually
been performed, is moved back to before the status date in order for
calculations such as SPI to be correct. When entering progress, one needs
to insure that the work performed is posted to the actual dates where it
took place - actuals should always describe observable physical reality.