Is 50% good enough?

One of the common sayings I like to make about Lean projects is that it is 'better to achieve 80% now than 100% never'.

What this is meant to show is that if you wait until you have a 'Future State' that addresses every scenario and every situation you will never move forward. Whilst this may seem a strange statement for those who are aware of my stance on the impact of Lean on organisational Risk, it is really a call to action to organisations who are trapped in cycles of discussion and review and are finding it difficult to move to action - although you still need to assess the risks that the implementation will bring and put in place suitable controls.

The reason for this blog is that too many organisations that I worked with have previously experienced problems and delays in moving forward as they tried to assess every eventuality, even though the action may only occur once or twice in a lifetime!

I propose that it is better to have properly structured solutions that address 80% of the problems than to wait for ever for a solution to every solution. Using simple Pareto Analysis, an 80% solution would cover all of the most common activities - leaving more time to spend dealing with the minor occurrences (that you have to deal with anyway).

My closing point on this post brings me back to the title of this blog - in that whilst 80% now is better than 100%, I suspect that a properly structured improvement that makes a 50% improvement is still worth having!

What is your view?