What gets flagged by the Audit
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A Task or Milestone with a start date prior to the project's status date showing zero percent complete
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A Task or Milestone with a finish date prior to the project's status date showing less than 100 percent complete
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A Task or Milestone with Actual Start/Finish dates after the Status date
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In-progress Tasks having any portion of unfinished work prior to the status date
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In-progress Tasks having any portion of finished work after the status date
Why does it matter if items in the project have Invalid Status?
Invalid status means that the start and finish dates may not be correct. If any task's dates are incorrect, then so too may be the dates for dependent tasks (tasks having a predecessor of a item with invalid status). The result of a Critical Path Method (CPM) analysis or root cause analysis may be incorrect if tasks are not properly showing their status.
Does every task and milestone in a project need valid status?
Yes.
Resolving Invalid Status
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Perform the Audit and Click on each item in the resulting tasks list to go to the offending task. You can also click Filter for Items Below to display tasks with audit issues and record the offending condition in the Integrity Note log field.
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Ensure that all work performed is showing prior to the Project's Status date and all work remaining is showing after the status date. The SSI Post Task Status Tools are helpful to ensure valid task status by making sure Actual Dates are prior to the status date, non-actual (Predicted dates) are ahead of the status date and work performed meets the project status date.
What Else to Consider
The DCMA 14 Point Assessment tests for "Invalid Dates"
Invalid Dates: All activities with planned work in the past or actual work in the future. There should not be any invalid dates in the schedule
What Does Invalid Status Looks Like in a Project?
In the examples below, the red line is the project's status date (the finger points to the status date in the examples) and the shaded portion of the bar shows progress or performance for the task bar. The Audit for Invalid Status can only be performed if the project has a status date.
Example 1 - Invalid Start Date & Progress Not Posted to Meet the Project's Status Date
In this example, the task has no Actual Start date and is Zero % Complete. The work scheduled from Monday - Friday of the week that begins July 6th has not started and no progress has been made. Since the project team can't go back in time to perform that work it needs to move forward. If the unfinished work is left where it is, the successors to this task will not show accurate start and finish dates. The SSI Audit Log shows the condition that needs to be resolved by the scheduler and the project team.
Example 2 - Invalid Start & Finish Date & Progress Not Posted to Meet the Project's Status Date
In this example, the task has no Actual Start & no Actual Finish date, making it Zero % Complete. As in example 1, the project team can't go back in time to perform the unfinished work and it needs to be move forward. The successors of this task will not show correct dates until this condition is resolved.
Example 3 - Invalid Progress - Not Posted to Meet the Project's Status Date
Though the task in this example has a value for % Complete and does show an Actual Start date, the amount of progress posted (the arrow shown the end of the progress period) is only enough to show completion of the work scheduled on Monday and Tuesday of the week that begins July 6th. The work scheduled on Wednesday - Friday of the week prior to the status date (the finger points to the project's status date) is still showin incomplete and needs to be moved to the right of the status date. Note the Resume date in this example. When a task is in-progress, Project shows the earliest date when the unfinished work can resume. The resume date should always be after the status date. Again, unless the unfinished work is rescheduled, the dates for successors is not accurate.
Example 5 - Invalid Progress - Progress Posted After the Project's Status Date
Progress posted after the status date is also invalid because it shows work performed on dates that have not occurred yet. Just as the team can't go back in time to perform unfinished work, they can't perform work in the future unless they have a Delorean, a Flux Capacitor and 1.21 gigawatts of electricity.
Example 6 - Invalid Start Date - Start is after Project's Status Date
Like example 5, this task is showing an Actual Start date and progress in the future. If this task really did start, it started in the past and if 25% of the work really is complete, it was completed in the past.
