Many organisations have nodded approvingly and bought into the logic of this illustration – including those responsible for the project portfolios. However, the principle of short and fat is only very rarely implemented.
It seems as if we, logically, acknowledge the logic of the principle, but do not perceive it to be sufficiently relevant in relation to our own situation, and, consequently, the stomach ache fails to appear which would otherwise have encouraged us to change the situation.
A container terminal in South America
Let us take a look at a fictitious example from quite another world – a container terminal in South America.
You are the manager of a container terminal at the South American west coast:
- The container terminal has four container cranes, but three of them are out of operation and will be so for several months.
- Thus, only one crane is in operation. The capacity of this crane is one ship per day. In other words, the crane can unload and load one container ship of 2,000 TEU a day (TEU: measuring unit for the carrying capacity of a container ship)
- In the shipping industry, it is a widely accepted industry norm that a 2,000 TEU container ship at sea between ports creates value of DKK 1 million per day. Every day spent in port, thus, ”costs” the ship owner DKK 1 million.
One Monday morning, six container ships arrive at your terminal at exactly the same time:
- All six ships are of the same size: 2,000 TEU
- The six captains are all eager to get started unloading and loading their ships and expect the terminal crew to begin working on their ship right away
- How would you plan the unloading and loading of the six ships?
- What is the total cost for the ship owners of having their ships wait in port?