The Pareto principle is the "law of the fundamental few". More specifically, it asserts that by focusing on the 20% of work that a lot of matters to your client, you will produce 80% of your project's results. It's extremely important to remember the significance of this principle in two specific areas as assembling your garden shed progresses: time management together with quality control.
1) Time Management
One of the figurative wires on which project managers have to balance throughout the project lifecycle is which fine line between meeting ever-mounting requests on the hard-to-satisfy client with constraints of a tight project schedule. So, what do you accomplish when stakeholders add nice-to-have scope, small requirement changes, or requests for functionality that won't necessarily add value or efficiency to their business processes? Or how do people address a perfectionist developer who has a tendency to pour hours of unneeded development into product enhancements to please a particular user or business owner? Unreservedly discourage gold-plating just by enforcing and educating your teammates over the Pareto principle.
To sprinkle in your projects, consider genital herpes virus treatments learned earlier: identify the 20% involving requirements or functionality which will most meet the project's original business case avoiding tweaks and modifications that add little overall functional value. Make clear the effect that frivolous updates have in the project schedule, costs, and also the success of the chartered job. Reasoning with stakeholders and teammates in this way will often win them to your side and will protect your timeline.
2) Quality Control
Ensuring the products a final deliverable by way of first-rate development and thorough testing and verification is a given, right? A tougher task, however, may be prioritizing resolution of blemishes found during testing. In such a case, the Pareto principle can also be applied when addressing system issues: 20% of the defects cause 80% in the problems. What does that mean for your team? Although it usually is tempting to tackle the "low-hanging fruit"--defects that are easy-to-fix but not necessarily crucial for you to the business--it's wiser to funnel the majority of your efforts into addressing the more difficult issues. Isolate the more important 20% which will bring 80% or the majority of the benefits to your customer. This focus will result in increased success of your deliverables and a greater level of stakeholder total satisfaction. The functionality most significant to their business should be delivered along with the least flaws. Once the more difficult 20% have ended up tackled, you can address those easy-wins along with the confidence of knowing which you've already met the majority of your client's needs.
If there's one thing that you can take away from the following long-used rule, remember the following: while I certainly don't discourage working harder, being armed while using the foreknowledge of the Pareto process, you can channel your team's efforts to figure smarter. While not discounting the remaining 80% of work you'll have to do after putting this process into practice, your clients will thanks a lot for prioritizing project tasks to meet the majority of their needs first.
pareto principle