In part one, I said time is not equal to money. Most of the time. Project managers and managers in general must know the difference. In that post, I highlight when time is not money. In part 2, I’ll explain when time is money.

Let’s suppose your teams are delivering one project every other month; that’s 6 projects annually.

If each project is worth $600k, your revenue over the year would be $3.6MM

Before I go on, think for a moment about your car. Or cars in general. Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla Motors said, “Most cars are only in use by their owners for 5% to 10% of the day.”

Just like cars, projects are idle most of the time. The work or tasks are not active, they are waiting.

The project duration is comprised mostly of waiting, not working. Waiting for the next job, waiting for approvals, waiting for information; waiting, not working

What would happen if you concentrated your resources to focus on a single project at a time? What if they focused on finishing projects, not finishing tasks?

You could reduce all project durations, and do more.

If you made a modest change – simply changing priorities to focus effort on the completion of the critical chain, you could reduce durations by a third or even half.

Your $3.6MM in revenue could climb to $5.4MM or even $7.2MM. With the same resources.

This is not a fantasy; I have seen this many time with many of our clients, using ViewPoint Visual Project Management and the Theory of Constraints.

FMC Technologies had many remote teams and getting collaboration between design, supply chain, and production was critical to their success. They reduced their project duration from 31 days to 8, increasing shipments 326%, with the corresponding profit increase.

This just one example of real world success. Focus on completions – get more done. Ship more. Bill more. Earn more.

Time is money.