How to reduce total working hours and shorten the needed duration in a project environment - in 2 simple 'Do it yourself'steps.

 Who does not recognize the phenomenon of Bad Multi Tasking (BMT), jumping between a large number of open tasks waiting for his/her attention? It leads to a decrease of output, an extension of the time to complete the tasks, delayed deliveries of projects, hurt the quality of work and decrease the motivation.
The phenomenon is prevalent in all aspects of management. Managers deal with many subjects, and frequently jump to the new subject before they completed and closed the previous subjects. R&D people, engineers, technicians and software people deal simultaneously with great number of tasks; and also lawyers and accountants handle many cases in parallel.

When we start to work a on new subject, we need time to learn and adapt to the new task. - What is the goal of the task? What do they want from me actually? How will I solve this problem? What exactly do I have to do? This process is called 'Mental Setup'. When you leave an unaccomplished task, pass to another task and after some while return to the first task, in many cases you do not remember the details of the task and the strategy of its solution. You have to do a new 'Mental Setup'. If the task is finished in one treatment from start to end, we can save many 'Mental Setups'. As an result the output will increase the delivery time will be shortened. And above all, quality of the work is significantly improved. When the task is completed by continuously working on it, the required 40 work hours in one week, the quality of the work and the delivered task specs are dramatically higher than when the results of the same task is dragged over 3 months with long interruptions. The latter, will definitely consume a lot more work hours.

Undoubtedly, the conditions that enable you to work on one task only, are not there in the modern world of management. What can be done, though, is to reduce the effect of the BMT (Bad Multi Tasking). Awareness is the necessary condition for the reduction, but this is not enough. The tactic to use is "Gating" , controlling the number, the flow of tasks to the persons or the teams who will execute these. It means that we assure, to have no more than a predetermined number of tasks in front of them. If they already have the quota, no more tasks are released to the people/teams until one of the existing ones will be declared completed. In many cases people or teams have 10 till 20 open tasks, sometime the total work load represented is several months.

That cause the management not to have good control on the project and setting priorities that will justify themselves is almost an impossible mission. We should reduce it to a maximum of five but preferably to three . One of the reasons for the BMT is the assumption that the project's client would like to 'know' that his project is in process. The result is that all the tasks are delayed and majority of the projects are not finished on time. The result of Gating will be - more satisfied customers, better quality and exposing significant amount of additional capacity (that will enable you to take more projects.)

The second step that you should implement is not to release any task that does not have a 'Full Kit'. It must have full specification, complete work process and all task requirements are available. In the current mode of operation (with a lot of BMT) it is not so important; anyhow we put tasks aside, so we will wait for a predecessor that have not finished yet, we will wait for clarifications or wait for further instructions. Under the Gating regime those task will not be released (it is better to wait with the release and let the resource to clean his area in the meantime).

The nice aspect of these two recommended steps is - you can do it immediately, without waiting for any additional software. You just have to nominate a 'Gate keeper', a person who will be responsible for the Gating. If you are familiar with CCPM (Critical Chain Project Management) you know that when you use it, it will bring you better results by setting the priorities on a global objective consideration, rather the more intuitive and local ones as suggested here. But it takes time to choose the right software and to train the right people. If you implement the described 2 steps you can immediately harvest the better performance and you will be able to speed up the CCPM implementation and get all the tremendous benefits , a lot earlier.

Artikeln är skriven av Alex Meshar, partner i GIG och VD för Goldratt Implementation Group (NE) B.V. i Den Haag. Han föddes i Israel 1943 och har arbetat med i Creative Output och AGI med Dr. Goldratt sedan 1980. Du kan skriva till honom på alex.meshar@gig-europe.eu