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The 80/20 Trap And Project Time Management

By: Michael Adams

Time Management and Project Management are closely related because in both cases you're managing time (yours or the team members) and how long it takes to get tasks completed.

Beyond simply being the guy in charge, a good project manager helps team members develop their own time management and scheduling skills. Another part of the job is reviewing the work done on the project and evaluating whether the project will be delivered on time.

The "80/20 Trap" is one of the biggest pitfalls for team members new to scheduling and managing their own time.

My work involved managing software developers and what I will cover is my experience at that task. This "80/20 Trap" is something that can be applied, with a certain amount of experience, across a wide variety of projects.

In the software business, sometimes the 80/20 rule is applied this way "The last 20% of the work takes 80% of the time to complete".

I'm not sure that's a proper application of the 80/20 Rule (Pareto Principle), but it seems to hold true in many cases because there is often a level of polish and usability testing after a feature is complete. This polish and usability testing often takes more time than anyone expects even as much as 4x the time to create the original feature (thus the 80/20 rule).

Creating a separate schedule for polish time and usability testing is the smart thing to do, but some managers forget to do it. Even if the project manager does schedule these two sets of work separately from feature development, the programmer will still often need more time than expected to simply debug or clean up his feature for the polish/usability testing phase.

So think about this with me for a moment.

When a software developer comes to me and tells me that he is 80% done with a feature and on track with his schedule, because he has only spent 80% of the scheduled time so far, I now that he's late and doesn't even realize it. I also know that the team member is very unlikely to finish his feature within the scheduled 5 days.

Being a programmer or managing programmer can be difficult jobs. If the team does not understand the 80/20 rule, then it's almost certain that the project will repeatedly miss its delivery day.

Needless to mention, it's always best to point out the "80/20 Trap" when a programmer, or anyone, falls into it. Understanding that the last 20% of the work can take 80% of the total task time, makes it critical to address it as soon as possible.

In the situations where no one called out the "80/20 Trap", quality issues and problems just pile up on themselves each day that passes, making it even harder on everyone involved. Suffice to say, it's always best to address the issues as early as possible.

Beyond software, I think the idea of the "80/20 Trap" is useful to understand for all types of projects and can easily be adopted to them. Project and team size doesn't matter, the principle scales, even if it's just you managing your own time and a personal project.

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For additional tips and hints about time management, be sure you check out Michael Adams' excellent free expert guide on tips for managing your time and multi-million dollar projects. Visit us at www.smart-time-management.com.




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