Pareto Principle

The value of the Pareto Principle for a project manager is that it reminds you to focus on the 20% of things that really matter on a project.

Pareto Analysis Step by Step

The Pareto principle is the idea that by doing 20% of the work you can generate 80% of the benefit of doing the whole job. Or in terms of quality improvement, a large majority of problems are produced by a few key causes. Pareto Analysis enables you to see what 20% of cases are causing 80% of the problems and where efforts should be focussed to achieve the greatest improvement.

Pareto Charts

Pareto analysis is named after Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist who lived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1897, he presented a formula that showed that income was distributed unevenly, with about 80% of the wealth in the hands of about 20% of the people.

Six Rules for Great IT Project Success

Project delivery makes IT organisations credible. When IT "gets it right" at the project level, its ability to impact the financial results of a company increases and its leadership in providing strategic direction improves. Good project delivery is the key to unlocking the door from the back-office to the boardroom. And yet, according to a recent survey by Accenture, only 29% of IT projects are considered successful. The average cost overrun is 56%; the typical delay is 84%. After decades spent learning and implementing project management methodologies, measurements and controls, the success rate of IT projects is no better than when a single computer took up an entire room.

 The Non-Pareto Principle

The "Pareto principle" has by this time become deeply rooted in our industrial literature. It is a shorthand name for the phenomenon that in any population which contributes to a common effect, a relative few of the contributors account for the bulk of the effect. Years ago I gave the name "Pareto" to this principle of the "vital few and trivial many." On subsequent challenge, I was forced to confess that I had mistakenly applied the wrong name to the principle. This confession changed nothing - the name "Pareto principle" has continued in force, and seems destined to become a permanent label for the phenomenon.