I have vague memories of Douglas Adams' book Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy - the planet is overpopulated - a grand scheme to colonise new worlds is developed - the plan is to send three gigantic space ships to the chosen destination - the first ship has infrastructure people; telephone sanitisers, hairdressers, public relations specialists etc. - the second ship is to have technicians and the third the designers and scientists.
The occupants of the first space ship to arrive can not understand what is taking the others so long to follow them.
Peccavi, February 2010