When they are processed in Canada, they are generally processed in order of arrival to their office; however, the interesting part starts when they are sent to out of Canada local visa offices, my assumption is that they throw the applications in a room where they gather dust for a few months (sometimes a year) and then a janitor opens accidentally the door and says "hey guys!!! there are some applications here, are you going to process them?".
As I have seen in GCMS notes, each stage has a maximum date to be completed, so if a visa office completes it one week (or even one day) before that date, they hit their monthly key performance indicator (KPI) and their processing is deemed a "success". It's no wonder the GCKey says that your application will move fast when its close to the end of the processing time, they only care about falling within those 20-24 months because then they can publish on their site that they processed 90% of the apps within that time
You are going to see many apps that were completed in 6 months (or even less), but they do these ones to average the system, so if you have 1 application processed in 6 months and another in 18, when you average, you have 12 months, which is considered very very good (compared to the standard time: 20 to 24 months)
I know it sounds crazy, but my application has been in "Application received" since it was sent to Mexico (August 20, 2019), so the theory might have some truth hehe
Thank you for your reply @diegosolano, it makes sense to me. And I wish a expedite process for you and all fellow applicants.
