Editor’s note: Second Editions are papers that have been previously published that have continued relevance and deserve additional visibility. The paper below was originally published in the December 2008 issue of Crosstalk, and the Spring 2009 edition of the Measurable News, published by the PMI College of Performance Management (PMI-CPM). This paper is included here with the permission of the authors, who are copyright holders.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) has just released the Fourth Edition to their world standard on project management: A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, the PMBOK^® Guide. Many new features have been added to this massive document among them new coverage of an earned value metric called the “To-Complete Performance Index” or simply the TCPI. What is the TCPI and why is it important? This article describes its purpose and utility.

Whenever a project commits to the employment of earned value to help manage their effort, they are suddenly inundated with a windfall of performance metrics which are available in no other project management technique. New acronyms suddenly emerge: PV, EV, AC, SV, SPI, CV, CPI, BAC, EAC, TCPI, and on and on. While all of these performance indicators can have value to any project, two EVM metrics in particular are critical to projects. They are the “CPI” and the “TCPI.”

The CPI (Cost Performance Index) tells us “what we have accomplished for what we have already spent.” Did we stay within the budget, or did we overrun? By contrast, the TCPI (To-Complete Performance Index) focuses on future work: “what performance levels we must achieve on the remaining work in order to meet our financial commitment to management.” While most practitioners of earned value understand the utility of the CPI, most have rarely ever used the TCPI. What a pity, for the TCPI when used in conjunction with the CPI provides a powerful set of tools in the management of a single project, a program, or a full portfolio of projects.

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