Goldratt's Rules of Flow

Al Shalloway started a free 4 week course on Limiting beliefs in Agile (and how to overcome them). It's being recorded and still running. See here: https://www.dhirubhai.net/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7251373846203670528?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

His 1. part was: "Values first!"

The "homework" was: read either "Goldratt's Rules of Flow" (Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag, 2023), or "Flow Engineering" by S. Pereira and Andrew Davis & then discuss among the participants in the next online session (which is recorded).

?? Well, I'm always game for a book challenge ... but I took the "easy way out": I listened to Rules of Flow as an audio book. It's a novel, after all ... The book is only 175 pages, that's a 4 hour "listen".

What did I take away from it?

• It is easy to follow along. Basically, it is a lightweight narration of the principles of Critical Chain Project- and Portfolio Management (CCPM) - which are excellent and a major recommendation to any company leader, management, project people ...
• I found it to be a modernized take on Eli Goldratt's original book on the subject, "Critical Chain".

• If you are not familiar with CC-Project Management yet, I would actually suggest reading "Rules of Flow" first. You get the concepts in a well-structured way.

• I did take away the concept of "dosage" (like the sensible intensity or amount of work, not thinly spread, but also no overload) and of "tight work" (focused, high-priority work without unnecessary interruptions until finished, no multi-tasking, no overload, little slack, aligned schedule with fast hand-overs) that I hadn't heard called that before.
• The original book "Critical Chain" goes a bit deeper into the subject than Rules of Flow - that's a good follow-up then.
• I know I haven't written anything about what the rules of flow are, and why Critical Chain (which is not just a variation of Critical Path ...) is so advantageous - and I won't.
• But you can cheat, also: I came across the "Page by Page, Chapter by Chapter" review by Fred Lybrand - as text and also as youtube-shorts, like the one below! Nice! He's got quite a lot of books that way - not only Goldratt.

• ?? I also tried out TOC- and CCPM related Custom GPTs like TOC Expert and TOC Expert Consultant for a summary of the book - I had used them very well on different problems and questions, but on the book, they seemed to invent stuff. Gemini did a better job, but still not sure ...

As for other books on Cricital Chain Project Management

there are many. ??????, exemplary:

• ??TOC Learner's book Cricital Chain Project Management by Rajeev Athavale - another compact and good take on CCPM
• ??Book of Dolphins by Wolfram Müller , Frank Erbacher , Kerstin Zulechner - good, current book on CCPM and combination with Agile
• ?? Projects that Flow by Uwe Techt - very detailed and extensive

• ... Fun Fact: Reading Rules of Flow, you'll get to meet professor Richard 'Rick' Silver again, who teaches Critical Chain PM at a university in the book. Deja vu - he was the one to develop CCPM in "Critical Chain" as an associate professor ... so he got "recycled" by Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag for the sequel ...

Well, I am looking forward to catching up with Al Shalloway's other three parts on dealing with limiting beliefs in Agile.

I started listening to S. Pereira's "Flow Engineering" now ... having such a hard time to read anything. Right now fighting the good fight with Rajeev Athavale's TOC in Brief for CxOs. It's good. I liked the very concise description of investment decisions with Throughput Accounting a lot so far, and the concrete "good - bad" decision examples.

Thorsten Speil