Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Small tasks should need small effort. Large tasks should need large effort. Those nuggets of management wisdom are often wrong. I find that task effort relates to task difficulty, and task difficulty relates to the experience of the people on hand.

I recently helped some people remodel a person’s house. We did major work on almost every room in the house.

There is one thing we didn’t finish – a little spot in a second bathroom. This little spot is where the baseboard meets the shower stall meets the wall meets the floor meets a piece of trim. This little spot is about 2 cubic inches of space.

That little spot is little. It seems that such a little thing would require a little work. Wrong!

We carpeted four bedrooms in less time and manpower than we have spent on that little spot in the bathroom. We painted six rooms in less time and manpower than we have spent on that little spot in the bathroom. We hauled ten pickup truck loads of trash to the dump in less time and manpower than we have spent on that little spot in the bathroom. I could go on with other examples.

That little spot in the bathroom is still a little spot as we have yet to find a way to fill it with something other than crumpled newspaper and duct tape.

I have similar experiences in my real-life paying job. I was once on a project where we used satellites to move data between places on the earth. The satellites were shared resources, so we needed software to manage schedule conflicts. We were able to find satellites that met our needs, meet with satellite access providers, sign contracts, and bring a hundred people to agreement on interfaces. We struggled, however, to  figure 24 hours in a day, the rollover from one day to the next, and the rollover from one month to the next. Simple calendar functions almost killed a multi-million dollar project.

I have learned (the hard way) that the size of a task does not indicate the cost of the task. That cost can be measured in person-hours, dollars, materials, and any other resource you wish to count. Assuming task size equals cost can be disastrous. If nothing else, it is frustrating to no end.

Task cost is more a measure of difficulty. In my experience, difficulty relates to the experience of the people attempting the task. For remodeling the house, we had people who could paint rooms, lay carpet, and haul trash. We didn’t have people who could remodel bathrooms. In the satellite example, we had satellite engineers and managers. We didn’t have calendar programmers.

Always try to have people on hand who are experienced at the tasks on hand.

Now where is the newspaper and duct tape?