PMcrunch

Project Management involves a great deal of discipline in making sure that "all the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed’.  It clearly involves a great deal of attention to detail, and a high degree of thoroughness.  So how do we balance that with a practical realism that allows us to prioritize and focus on the most important activities?  The pareto principle and project management join seamlessly here.

One of the fundamental knowledge areas outlined in the PMBOK is the Project Integration Management.  Here we tie together and ‘integrate’ the following:

• Project Charter
• Project Scope
• Project Management Plan
• Executing process
• Monitor and control process
• Integrated Change Control
• Project Close

While Project Integration Management seems on the surface to be nearly all-inclusive, it is actually up to us as the project managers to make that judgment.

The PMBOK Guide, Third Edition, near the beginning of Chapter 4 on Project Integration Management, states:

"Most experienced project management practitioners know there is no single way to manage a project.  They apply project management knowledge, skills, and processes in different orders and degrees of rigor to achieve the desired project performance.  However, the perception that a particular process is not required does not mean that it should not be addressed.  The project manager and project team must address every process, and the level of implementation for each process must be determined for each specific project."

Aside from experience, what is a basic tool that can help us make these judgments?

Fortunately, there is a ‘litmus test’ that we can institute in exercising our judgment on priorities.  It is called the pareto principle.  The pareto principle is also known as the 80:20 rule, and it can be stated in a number of ways:

1. 80% of the effects result from 20% of the causes
2. 80% of the results are achieved by 20% of the effort
3. 80% of the problems can be solved by 20% of the solutions
4. …and many more ways of stating this…

The most effective managers keep an intense eye on priorities.  They keep an eye on what will matter the most in the end.  What metric or very few metrics are the real key success indicators?  With this clearly in mind, they simply focus almost exclusively on tasks that affect those key metrics, and virtually ignore all others.  This keen sense of priorities thus becomes a top managerial strength. 

If you can be clear on the priorities and have the courage to act on that knowledge, it is much simpler to leverage the pareto principle to advantage as a project manager.
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John Reiling, PMP
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