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blog post, Methods, New product development, Project Management, Project management tools, Quality

80/20 Principle – The principle with ever increasing use cases

With the innumerable opportunities to get diverted from what is relevant, I have seen many successful and not that successful organizations, teams and individuals working very hard on the irrevelant and getting buried there. The 80/20 principle or the Pareto Principle is for those who are willing to pause a while before jumping into action. Though many have written about Pareto principle and analysis before, I thought of writing this blog post for the benefit of many who plunge into action on irrelevant projects, indicators than on the relevant ones. There is time for everything, if we can prioritize, eliminate, delegate and decide on the mosr relevant work we ahould be doing.

Pareto Principle or the 80/20 Principle

The 80/20 principle or the Pareto Principle by Vilfredo Pareto in the year 1896 is the one which is always heard in all walks of life, time and again even after a century of its discovery. Last week I heard it in our senior management review when one of the senior managers used 80/20 to highlight the need to focus on the 20% of the customers contributing to 80% of the revenues. The use cases of 80:20 or the pareto principle is innumerable. Here are some;

By eliminating 20% of the root causes we can eliminate 80% of the defects in a product
20% of the customers contribute to 80% of the revenue. It makes sense to focus on this 20% of the customers.
80% of the customers uses 20% of the features of the products. The remaining 80% of the features are used only by 20% of the customers.
By focusing on 20% of the project health indicators proactively, 80% of the problems can be eliminated / prevented.
20% of unhealthy practices contribute to 80% of the productivity loss. By controlling this 20% percentage of unhealthy practices, productivity can be improved phenominally.
20% of the workforce does 80% of the work. Remaining 80% does only 20% of the work
20% of the work we do produces 80% of the results. The remaining 80% of the work produces only 20% of the results.
During 20% of our worktime, we complete 80% of our work. During the remaining 80% of our work time, we complete only 20% of work.
Only 20% of the projects yield the desired results, 80% of the projects do not yield desired results.

Pareto analysis

Here are the steps involved in performing Pareto Analysis;

Identify the probable rootcauses – The best ways to do this is to brainstorm with the team to identify potential rootcauses leading to the situation. Ishikawa diagram or the Fishbone diagram can help to do structured brainstorming to arrive at the potential root causes.
Frequency of occurrence – With the help of data, identify how many times each rootcause occurred, resulting in the outcome.
Order on frequency – List the root causes based on the frequency of their occurrenece (in the descending order)
Prioritize and take action – Identify the 20% of root causes contributing to the 80% of occurrences. By controlling these 20% of the root causes, 80% of the problems can be eliminated.

80/20 at a personal level

Can be effectively used at a personal level to;

Eliminate unproductive activities
Focus on strengths
Finding time to work on Important and not urgent projects

agile, Hybrid Project Management, New product development, Research & Development

Request for feedback to serve you and the project management community better

Agile is excellent. Predictive project management is even better. Leveraging the strengths of these two intelligently to make the projects successful is very practical and many of the organizations are practicing hybrid project management very effectively. We are really glad to see this independent view of ours gaining wider acceptance these days. Thanks to PMI, for incorporating the same views in the latest version of the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). This is the project management practitioner’s perspective.

When it comes to project management education perspective, our experience is totally different. When we try to educate a project management professional both Agile and Predictive together, that becomes very difficult to understand and comprehend for them. That is because some of the fundamentals of predictive and agile are different and even conflicting.

Hence our new project management training program is highly modular and comprises of a stack of four programs;

Predictive Project Management (PPM)
Agile Project Management (PPM)
Hybrid Project Management (HPM)
PMP Content & Certification focus

These are our thoughts based on experience, and we have started developing these training programs with the hope of making things easier for the learner of professional project management, for both the experienced and the novice.

Here is the help we need from you…

We have completed the week#1 module of the Predictive Project Management Course, which is part of the New 10 week PMP program. We are seeking early inputs / feedback from you to incorporate them into the subsequent modules and courses which will definitely help us to make these courses very learner friendly to serve you and the project management community better in the coming days. Your inputs are very valuable to us. Please spare a few minutes of your valuable time to share your experience and views with us.

Click here for the Week#1 Module of Predictive Project Management

Click here to provide us with your feedback

agile, blog post, Management, New product development, Project Management, Trends in project management

Lead the change your product is intended to make

You have a brilliant product idea, and you want to go ahead very fast with the product idea, and unfortunately things are not moving as planned. After some time, you are tired, and almost drops the idea. A few years later suddenly you come across a very successful product in the market, similar to the one you conceived years before and dropped half way through. This is a very common shared experience by many first time product owners.

After all, every innovative product is intended to shake the world in a gentle way. It is about changing the lives of many in a gentle way. The internet did it. iPhone did it with the touch screen. The android phone did it in a subtly different way. The covid vaccines are doing it, the medical equipment and the building material segment is doing it…the automotive industry is a veteran in this. ..every successful product changes the way we do things in a subtly better innovative way. More than just product development, what really matters is the long term strategy to manage the change the product is intended to deliver to it’s end users.

Eight steps to manage the change promised by the product of your project

Sense of Urgency – The first and foremost ingredient to change management is creating the sense of urgency. When we are working for others, we are always pressurized by others deadlines. But when you own the product, the risk of complacency is very high. During the initial phases of the product, your investment in the product is low. Your only potential loss is the opportunity cost (opportunity lost if the product fails to take off) which is a futuristic cash flow. You do not feel a crisis at this stage and the ‘sense of urgency’ can take a back seat. This is really risky phase. Consistent ‘sense of urgency’ is one good quality I have observed in every successful product owner / entrepreneur.
Creating the guiding coalition – To see the envisaged change by the product of your project impacting the world positively, one has to create a great coalition who resonates the same excitement and sense of urgency you have about the product. This coalition include technical experts, financial experts, marketing gurus, quality assurance, sales, investors…they are all external entities and getting them as excited as you are in the project starts with the right selection of these partners and getting them work together as a team.
Developing a vision & Strategy – For many reasons, for many the vision and strategy documents are something to decorate the office. Many management books describes vision as something that motivates you to get up everyday and work. The best definition of ‘Vision’ that excites me most is the one by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, the late president of India. It goes like this…’Vision is something that wont let you to sleep, till accomplished’. Having an exciting vision and a strategy to support it makes all the partners / stakeholders work together as a cohesive unit.
Communicating the change vision – Nobody lights a lamp and keeps it under the cot, instead it is placed on the lamp stand so that others can see the light. This is true with the change visions as well.
Empowering broad based action – Removing impediments, getting rid of obstacles, encouraging risk taking and innovation.
Generating short term wins – Releasing the minimum viable product (MVP), as fast as possible to the early adopters and then moving fast to address the other segments.
Consolidating gains and producing more change – Incorporating change at a rapid pace to incorporate the feedback and the lessons from the market.
Anchoring new approaches in the culture – After the early successes, profitable cash flows, successful partnerships it is time to consolidate, refine and institutionalize so that you can move on to more exciting products and changes that can impact the world in a better, bigger way.

Every project has a product or service as a primary deliverable. These products and services brings in changes the way people do things. Developing a product with the technical team is easier when compared to sell and manage the change the product offers. While developing the product calls for management skills, managing the change need leadership skills. Behind every successful product, there is a successful product owner who plays the leaders role.

Reference – Leading change – John P Kotter