How to cut project durations from 25-50% with no increase in costs!

[With thanks to Eliyahu Goldratt, creator of the theory of constraints and the critical chain method for scheduling projects.]

Constantly Changing Priorities

Common complaints fielded in our critical thinking and project management workshops about participants’ organizations include overwork, out of control projects and the lack of clear priorities. People report being told on one hand that everything is a priority and on the other that a new high priority item must be addressed a.s.a.p. What can be done to reduce the confusion and improve work productivity, satisfaction, and shrink the time it takes to do projects? Here is one powerful idea.

A Simple Example

You are responsible for assigning work crews to paint new houses. Tomorrow six houses become available for your department to paint. You have six painters on staff. Each house requires six person-days of painting to complete. How should you distribute the work? Consider the following two options.

ALL-AT-ONCE or NO PRIORITY approach: Assign one person per house, working all projects simultaneously. Six days will elapse to complete each house.

ONE-BY-ONE or CLEAR PRIORITY approach: Use all six people to paint one house at a time. This will result in one house being completed each day.

Which strategy is better? The All-At Once approach requires six days per house. But, the One-By-One strategy cuts average project duration significantly. See “Days To Finish” and “Days Saved” columns for each project (house) using the CLEAR PRIORITY approach.

The One-By-One Strategy allows five of the houses to be done earlier than the All-At-Once Strategy does. The average number of elapsed days, start to finish, for each house is just 3.5 days vs. 6. That’s 42% sooner!

Multiple Projects in Organizations with Limited Resources

How might this simple example be applied to departments within organizations attempting to do multiple projects with limited resources?

The two project approaches differed in the average time from start to completion. The one that reduced average time per project, put available resources to work on one project at a time. This is the clear priority approach. Similarly, when a department or resource unit has work to perform on multiple projects, the best way to speed projects on to the next department or resource unit is to focus on one project at a time. Avoid multitasking or needlessly working on multiple projects at the same time. The negative impact of multitasking accumulates as project work moves from department to department, delaying completion of all projects. This in turn delays revenues or other benefits a series of completed projects would produce.

Why Multitask?

Why do departments and resource units multitask? Multitasking is encouraged when departments are held accountable for showing progress on multiple projects over the same short time period. Add to this the common practice of failing to identify the priority of projects (or making all projects high priority) and it is not surprising that multitasking is common and that this results in most projects being late and over budget. Part of the solution is to establish clear priorities so that each department or resource unit knows which project gets first and full attention. No department should ever be forced to wait while another department addresses lower priority work unnecessarily.

Summary

Focusing efforts on the highest priority project possible will result in minimum project durations. It is the completion of projects that allows the organization to gain benefits - more effective internal systems, better cash flow, and increased total revenue.

If you have questions about project management, please contact BPI. We would be happy to speak with you about how to improve performance. Our Critical Thinking for Leaders methods help make sure the right projects and priorities are identified and our Systematic Project Management methods help teams implement those projects quickly.