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Don't Fall Into the 80/20 Time Trap With Project Management

Author: MichaelAdams Total views: 9 Word Count: 556

I normally write about Time Management, but another topic "Project Management" involves a large amount of time management across a set of project tasks or team members.

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.

There's a version of the 80/20 rule for software which says "It takes 20% of the time to do the first 80% of the work and then 80% of the time to do the last 20% of the work".

Whether or not this is an appropriate application of the Pareto Principle (80/20) rule, it does appear to be oddly accurate in many situations. After a software feature is complete, there is often an additional amount of usability testing, and polish work that needs to be done. Sometimes this extra work can take up to 3 to 4 times the amount of time it took to create the original feature.

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.

Now that you understand the 80/20 rule about software development, think about the situation for a moment with me.

If a team member comes up to me and says "I'm 80% done with this feature and I'm on track because I spent 4 out of my 5 scheduled days so far", you now know as well as I do, that this team member isn't going to finish their feature within the scheduled time allowed (in this case it was a total of 5 days).

As a former programmer, I know coding can be a difficult job. Scheduling is hard enough already, but when neither the programmer or the project manager understand the 80/20 rule, predicting the delivery date for the software is nearly impossible and it's near certain that the project will be late.

It's not actually that hard to fall into the "80/20 Trap". I've even seen it happen to experienced people. The best thing to do when you see it is to address it right away, in a calm cool and professional manner.

When you see it and don't address it, you're just pushing your problems in front of you, and things will get worse each day the project progresses. In other words, you'll pay for it at some point so you might as well deal with it as soon as possible.

Whether you make software or not, use this notion of the "80/20 Trap" to help raise the predictability of your delivery dates, not matter what type of project you're working on, whether you're only working with yourself or managing any sort of team.

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About the Author

For additional strategies on time management, be sure you claim your copy of Michael Adams' exclusive free report on tips for managing your time and multi-million dollar projects. Visit us at www.smart-time-management.com.

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