The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80-20 rule, states that in almost any situation, roughly 80% of the results come from 20% of the effort. In other words, a small number of input factors often have a much greater effect than others.
The Pareto principle can be applied to hybrid project management to help you get the most out of your resources and produce better results more efficiently. How? Let’s take a closer look at how you can use this principle to add value to your hybrid project management.
Pareto Principle: The Keys to Hybrid Project Management
The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, is based on the idea that in almost any given scenario, roughly 80% of the resulting effects stem from 20% of the contributing causes. The Pareto Principle can be applied to all sorts of things, from feeding chickens to understanding why your new dating app isn’t getting any dates. For hybrid project management, the Pareto Principle is useful for identifying which activities are causing you the most trouble and what you can do about it. It’s especially helpful when you’re working with two or more teams across different locations and businesses at once. The Pareto Principle can help you see where your difficulties lie and how you can improve them. Here’s how to apply it for hybrid project management.
What is the Pareto Principle?
The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, is based on the idea that in almost any given scenario, roughly 80% of the resulting effects stem from 20% of the contributing causes. The Pareto Principle can be applied to all sorts of things, from feeding chickens to understanding why your new dating app isn’t getting any dates. For hybrid project management, the Pareto Principle is useful for identifying which activities are causing you the most trouble and what you can do about it. It’s especially helpful when you’re working with two or more teams across different locations and businesses at once. The Pareto Principle can help you see where your difficulties lie and how you can improve them. Here’s how to apply it for hybrid project management.
Identify the bottlenecks in your project
Before you can determine which activities are causing you the most trouble, you need to know what’s going wrong with your hybrid project as a whole. Which processes are causing the most friction? Where are the bottlenecks? For example, if your teams are having trouble communicating with one another, that’s a bottleneck. If your marketing team can’t get any of their deliverables done, that’s a bottleneck. If you have remote teams, then you’re likely encountering challenges with communication. This might come from a lack of trust, a lack of understanding about the work being done, not having the right tools to facilitate communication—there are many potential causes.
Which team is causing the most friction?
Once you’ve identified your bottlenecks, you can then determine whether one team or several teams are causing the problems. If a certain team is causing the most friction, there may be a problem with the way their work is being scheduled and managed. Are they having trouble understanding their deliverables and due dates? Are they having trouble getting their work done because they don’t have the right tools? Are they having trouble communicating with the rest of your team?
Which activities are taking up your time?
Next, you’ll want to determine which activities are taking up the most time that could be better spent elsewhere. Once again, you can apply this to one team, several teams, or the project as a whole. For example, if you’re having trouble getting marketing deliverables completed, that’s taking up time from your hybrid project manager that could be better spent elsewhere. For each activity, ask yourself, “What could I be doing instead?” For example, if you’re spending time resolving misunderstandings between teams, you could try creating team meeting templates and guidelines for communicating with one another.
How can you adjust your project to benefit from this knowledge?
Now that you’ve applied the Pareto Principle to your hybrid project management, you can determine how to improve based on your findings. One way to do this is to create a hybrid project management board to keep track of all of your projects, their due dates, and their progress. Using a hybrid project management board allows you to visually identify which activities are causing you the most trouble and which ones are taking up the most time. If certain activities are taking up too much time, you can adjust the schedule to account for that. If certain activities are causing too much friction, you can try to mitigate that. You can also use hybrid project management software like Trello or Podio, which have features that allow you to keep track of everything and make adjustments based on your findings.
Conclusion
The Pareto Principle can be applied to almost everything in life, from project management to dating. It can help you identify the source of your problems and the activities that are taking up the most time and causing the most pain. Once you know what’s causing you trouble, you can adjust your hybrid project management to account for that and find a solution.