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Pareto Analysis
The Project Management Version:
The first 80% of a project takes 80% of the time, the last 20% takes the other 80%!
What is it really?
Pareto Analysis is a technique for recording and analysing information relating to a problem or cause, which easily enables the most significant aspects to be identified.

A Pareto diagram is a special form of vertical bar chart, or column chart, which allows the information to be visually displayed.
Tell me more
Analysis often reveals that, for example, a small number of failures are responsible for the bulk of quality costs. This conforms to the so-called "Pareto Principle", named after the Italian economist who discovered that the majority of his country's wealth was owned by relatively few people.

In many situations a similar pattern becomes apparent when we look at the relationship between numbers of items and their contribution to the extent of the problem.

This pattern has been referred to as the 80/20 rule and shows itself in many ways. 80% of your telephone calls, for instance, come from 20% of your colleagues; similarly 80% of a company's failure costs probably result from 20% of its problem areas.

Project Management is not immume from the 80/20 rule!