Effort driven tasks

Talking to a colleague the other day, the subject of staffing resources came up.

He wasn’t aware of the concept of effort driven tasks and non effort driven tasks.

So, for the benefit of others, here is an example.

Suppose you have a task, say moving a mound of earth from the bottom of the garden to the top. All other things being equal, the more resource allocated, the quicker it will get down.
(Resources being workers with wheel barrows, spades, protective clothing etc etc)

This is an effort driven task.

Now suppose that the task was installing a shower room in a pensioners “granny flat”. Space is likely to be cramped and there will come a limit when adding more resources is counter productive. (Mainly in this example because they will crash into each other…)

This is a non effort driven task

This principle is used extensively in project management but is worth knowing for the general manager.

Making the job easier or harder?

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