Efficiency · 01 / 07
Pareto principle
A minority of requests (or causes, customers or defects) accounts for most of the impact. Handling those few first pays off far more than spreading the effort evenly, as long as the impact really is concentrated.
20% carries 80% when α = log₄5 ≈ 1.16
Try it
Choose how many requests you handle, sort them by impact and see how much of the impact you cover.
- Requests handled
- 20%
- Impact covered, by impact
- –
- Impact covered, by arrival
- –
Where it applies
- A few types of incident generate most support tickets, so those are the ones to automate first.
- A few customers account for most of the revenue, and for most of the complaints too.
- In a portfolio review, three initiatives explain nearly all the expected value and the rest scatter capacity.
Where it comes from
Vilfredo Pareto observed in “Cours d’économie politique” (1896–1897) that income followed a power law. Joseph M. Juran generalized it as “the vital few and the trivial many” and named it the Pareto principle in his “Quality Control Handbook” (1951).
Bring it to your organization
In my workshops and diagnoses we work on this and other principles over your team’s real flow of work, with your data rather than the simulation’s. See services or write to me.