At the end of the project, what will be the value of SV?

Question

Options

• APositive
• BZero
• CNegative
• DGreater than one

• A
  11% (2)
• B
  78% (14)
• C
  6% (1)
• D
  6% (1)

Explanation

At project completion, Earned Value (EV) equals the Budget at Completion (BAC) because all planned work has been accomplished, and Planned Value (PV) also equals BAC because the full budget was scheduled to be spent. Since SV = EV − PV, this gives BAC − BAC = 0, every time, regardless of whether the project finished early or late.

Why the distractors fail:

• A (Positive): SV can be positive during the project when ahead of schedule, but it always converges to zero at the end - the "ahead of schedule" advantage disappears once all work is complete.
• C (Negative): Similarly, a behind-schedule project will have a negative SV mid-project, but once all deliverables are finished the math still resolves to zero.
• D (Greater than one): SV is a dollar amount (EV − PV), not a ratio, so "greater than one" is meaningless here. You may be thinking of SPI (Schedule Performance Index = EV/PV), which also converges to 1.0 at project end - not SV.

Memory tip: Think of SV as a "debt" - whether you were early or late, the moment the project closes, all the work is "paid off" and the balance hits zero. This is actually a known weakness of SV as a schedule metric: it masks past performance at project end.

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