The Myth of Project Management - The skylight is about to open, and more manpower can catch up with the progress?

When the project is about to open the sunroof

"Why can't it be finished? This is different from the original evaluation", "Hurry up, arrange a few more people to do software development, so that the time can be accelerated." When the project management is about to open the skylight, the above dialogue often occurs. The first intuition is that adding more people to help can speed up the development of the schedule, which is also a common myth in project management. If we want to shorten the time course by increasing the number of people, we must first consider the nature of the work.

the nature of the work

When decomposing a large project, two points must be considered:

1. Can the nature of work be divided?

If the nature of work is to be divisible, continuity must be given priority. Taking the baton race as an example, the second bat has to start, and the action must not be started until the first bat is finished. We often encounter such a situation at work, even if we send more manpower, we can only wait for the work ahead to be completed.

2. Is there still a need for communication after the division?

Some jobs can indeed be divided, but there must be good communication between them to run smoothly. In the assembly line of the restaurant, the chef receives the customer's order from the waiter, and will convey instructions and communicate with various positions in the kitchen. If you increase the number of people giving orders when there are not many guests, it will cause the messages between each other to be out of sync and cause confusion.

And if the nature of the work can be divided, and there is no need to communicate with each other after the division, then the project schedule can be reduced by increasing the number of people. It is more common to be biased towards labor types, such as harvesting large quantities of wheat and cotton or moving tiles.

Increase the number of people in various situations

We divide the situations into three categories:

1. Perfectly cut

As the number of people increases, the workload can be reduced. If four people do it for nine days, if it is replaced by six people, it will take six days; nine people will need four days; twelve people will need three days, and the relationship will be inversely proportional.

2. Unable to segment

It takes about ten months to give birth to a child, and to build a house, you must wait for the cement to dry before proceeding to the next step. In this way, those who are limited by natural behavior or have continuity cannot achieve the purpose of shortening the working hours by increasing the number of manpower.

3. Divisible but complex and requires communication

Adding one or two more people may shorten the working hours, but as the number of people increases, the cost of communication may outweigh the benefits of the help of many people.

in conclusion

In order to achieve the purpose of increasing the number of people and reducing the number of jobs, we must first evaluate whether the project in hand is suitable for segmentation, and whether it is necessary to communicate with each other after the segmentation. If it is like a complex software project, directly force the number of people to share the work. The initial effect may be good, but as the number of people increases, the cost of communication will overwhelm the benefits of many people helping, and finally lose salary and development time.