Theory of Constraints for Project Organisations. Not #CCPM

Theory of Constraints, is responsible for the most amazing success stories of organizations that boosted productivity by 20% to 50% and more. Probably the most fascinating lesson we can learn from studying Theory of Constraints is the simplicity of how we can accomplish so much more once we lift the constraint. This also applies to Critical Chain Project Management. It is beyond any imagination.

But Critical Chain Project Management is a curious case.

Theory of Constraints is supposed to make every situation exceedingly simple. Though I found CCPM exceedingly complex, implementation takes months or years, it is a major burden for the organization, it fails often, and organizations that successfully implemented CCPM often fall back into old habits afterward. Hardly any project organization I came across, operates bases on CCPM. The success stories are subject to survival bias. We only hear about the lucky few. It is as if CCPM is not ToC.

This curious paradox, being so incredibly successful and unsuccessful, is the reason for going back to the foundation of the Theory of Constraints and start from scratch by applying its principles to project organizations.

This journey has led to new insights. Applying these new insights made it possible to match the results CCPM success stories are known about, which takes only days or weeks to setup. Not for months or years. 10-30 minutes per project. For which project managers and people in projects don't need to change how they plan projects or do their work. They don't have to change anything for it.

I found the hardest part of my journey to recognize how exceedingly simple project organizations are. I like to share it with you when you are interested.

Why Theory of Constraints?

Theory of Constraints is a systems theory.

Systems theory is the study of systems. Systems are compost of parts that work together for a specific purpose. Like organization are systems that consist of people, processes, procedures, and other smaller systems, that work together for the purpose of making profit. Projects are systems that consist of people, plans, tasks, and other smaller systems that work together for the purpose of completing those projects successfully.

Systems can be very big and complicated, though the phenomenon the Theory of Constraints is based upon, is that systems can be controlled without knowledge of what is inside the system, or about its surroundings, only by controlling the constraint of the system.

Eli Goldratt was referring to this phenomenon when he wrote, no matter how complex it (the system) initially looks, every situation (to accomplish more) is exceedingly simple (only need to change the system’s constraint, without changing everything else).

For this article I'll might use sweeping generalizations with all the usual caveats if it won’t change the outcomes and conclusions. I will be precise and specific where it matters.

What is a constraint?

Theory of Constraints defines the constraint as factors or elements that determine how much the system can accomplish or anything that prevents the system from achieving its goal.

I’ll use a slightly different definition to bring constraint under our control and to differentiate from characteristics of the system or laws of nature we can't change:

Constraints are (our) limited abilities that limit how much the system can accomplish.

Different than the prevailing view within the ToC community, I define the constraint as a part of the system. Constraints are within the control of the system. In other words, a constraint can’t be outside the system.

I’ll introduce the concept of disablers being factors that disables the system to exploit or lift the constraint. Disablers typically beyond the control of the system.

5 steps for applying ToC

To accomplish more, TOCICO defines the following 5 Focusing Steps:

1. Identify (choose) the system’s constraint.
2. Decide how to exploit the system’s constraint.
3. Subordinate everything else to the above decision.
4. Elevate the system’s constraint.
5. If the constraint is broken go back to step one but do not allow Inertia to cause the system’s constraint.

This assumes already clarity about the system and the work or purpose of the system. I add this clarification as step 0, to be sure it is clear.

Identification of the disablers is an intermediate step after step 1, before step 2. Step 1b.

I substitute the phrase “exploit the constraint” with “empower your constraint”. The word empower has a more positive and actionable connotation, more emphatic and fits better with servant leadership than the word exploit. I don't like the idea of exploiting something when it is about people or teams.

I will rephrase step 2 accordingly: Decide how to remove disablers and how to empower your system’s constraint.

The new Focusing Steps

0.    Identify the system and its purpose or goal

1.    Identify the system’s constraint and the constraint’s disablers

2.    Decide how to remove the constraint’s disablers and then how to empower the system’s constraint.

3.    Subordinate everything else to the above decision.

4.    Elevate the system’s constraint.

5.    If the constraint is broken go back to step one but do not allow Inertia to cause the system’s constraint.

Systems in systems in systems ....

Take note that project organizations consist of several layers of nested systems:

• People / individual contributors, that make part of:
• Teams, that make part of:
• Projects, that make part of:
• Project organizations

We will discover during our analysis, there must be a system missing.

We have to anticipate that the constraint we are looking for, is not in the system under study. We might need to go up or down in the stack to find what we need to change.

In this article, I apply the first three steps to these systems, one by one.

The First System: Individual Contributors

The first system to take a closer look at is "the" individual contributors. People. For this, we can ignore the complexity of the rest of the organization and what is happening them. And also their precise job, their expertise, and the tools they use.

For organizations to accomplish more, we must find ways to accomplish more with individual contributors. Because, in the end, it is the individual contributors that contribute.

Step 0 – The Purpose: Individual Contributortors get the work done

In many situations, people need to devote their time (thinking) to making designs, writing something, solving problems, analyzing, validating, etc. It may take decades of study and experience to fulfill their job. Nevertheless, in the system of project organizations, the role or purpose of people can be articulated as simple as "to get the work done". The more time they can spend thinking, the more work gets done.

Step 1a – The Constraint: The ability of people to devote time thinking to complete tasks one at the time

This implies that the constraint for individual contributors is their ability to devote time thinking to complete tasks and activities, one at a time. How much people can do basically depends on how much time they can spend on it. When they need to get more done, we can’t just get them to make long hours.

Intelligence is a limiting factor as well. In traditional ToC you may call this a constraint as well. Like intelligence is a constraint for fully understanding quantum mechanics. I treat intelligence as a characteristic of the system Jan. It is beyond my control to change and even without help from others, there is no way I'm ever going to fully understand quantum mechanics. Intelligence wasn't a constraint for writing this article. The time I had to devote thinking was.

Step 1b – Disabler: Uncontrolled work supply and situational stress

Uncontrolled work supply and situational stress is a group of related disablers for individual contributors. It may lead to more work than can be completed, too little work to be fully productive, reduction of the effective time to be productive, and even reduced quality of thinking.

Examples of this category of disablers are:

• More work than can be completed, too little work to be productive all time, and workload fluctuations
• Frequent changing priorities, distractions, and disturbances
• Conflicts, pressure, confusion, lack of autonomy, ...

Step 2 – Remove the disablers and empower your people’s constraint? Remove or reduce uncontrolled work supply and situational stress.

To help individual contributors to accomplish more the most effective strategy is to remove or reduce uncontrolled work supply and situational stress. This disabler is a factor that is beyond the ability of most individual contributors to influence.

Step 3 – Subordinate: Postpone other initiatives until after reducing uncontrolled work supply and situational stress.

But the pitfall is, instead of removing or reducing uncontrolled work supply and situational stress, initiatives are initiated that put a burden on people, or demand behavior changes, without addressing disablers they are affected by most. Without addresssing these disablers, other initiatives will hardly be effective.

Summary of Individual Contributors

Step 0: We can approach "the" individual contributor as a system for the purpose of getting the work done.

Step 1: The constraint is their ability to devote their time to thinking. Though disturbances, distractions, and confusion diminish their ability to devote their time thinking.

Step 2: To exploit/increase their ability to devote their time to thinking, we need to prevent disturbances, distractions, and confusion.

Step 3: Instead of putting our effort into changing presumed root causes or constraints like multi-tasking by individual contributors, we must identify the source of disturbances, distractions, and confusion first and take it away.

Continue with the system one level up

To accomplish more, to make teams more efficient and for increasing productivity, we need to go up in the stack of systems one step. How to accomplish more with "Teams" and how to eliminate the disablers for individual contributors?

The Second System: Teams

The second system to take a closer look at are teams. Now we ignore how the individual contributors contribute to the team and what is happening outside the team.

The purpose of teams is to align work that can’t be done alone. And also to overcome obstacles and solve problems individual contributors struggle with.

The team also must eliminate disablers and create enablers. Disablers for team members are disturbances and distractions.

Step 0 – The Purpose: Align the work of individual contributors

In project organizations and projects there is lots of work we can’t do alone. That is when teams come into play. The purpose of teams is to align work that can’t be done alone.

Step 1a – The Constraint: The ability to collaborate

The constraint for teams the ability of its members to collaborate and align the work, overcome obstacles, and solve problems. Enabling collaboration will also remove disablers for individual contributors. Collaboration is often recognized as a key success factor for projects and organizations.

Step 1b – Disabler: To little time 

The thing people in project organizations complain most about is their workload and probably poor communication. It undermines the collaboration in the team. But let’s be honest. There is generally speaking nothing wrong with the communication skills of people. The issue is that they have too little time. And when time is running out, it is our natural response to focus on our personal contribution first and to ignore the needs of others.

Step 2 – Empower your constraint or remove disablers? Prevent team members don't have enough time

For improving collaboration requires to first assure people have sufficient time for their work as well as for collaboration. In many situations, the disabler high workload is caused by pressure from outside the team.

Identify why people get overloaded and remove that root cause.

Step 3 – Subordinate: Postpone other initiatives until team members have time and don’t have too many things to do/on their minds.

Subordinate everything to taking care of team members have sufficient time for collaboration. It is a pitfall to try to improve communication or collaborating skills or habits of team members when they don’t have the time for it or have too many other things to do or on their minds.

Summary

Step 0: The Purpose teams is to align the work of team members (individual contributors)

Step 1a: The Constraint is the ability of team members to collaborate

Step 1b: The Disabler for collaboration is lack of time – too many other things

Step 2: Decision Exploit or enable? Take care of team members having sufficient time

Step 3: Subordinate: Make taking care of team members having enough time top priority. Postpone initiatives to improve communication or collaboration skills or habits of team members until they have time to collaborate.

Continue with the system one level up: Projects

To continue our search for the constraint we are looking for to make teams more efficient and to increase productivity, we need to go up in the stack to the next system in line. Projects.

To exploit the system’s constraint for teams, sources of overload, the disablers, must be eliminated. For this, we need to go one level in the stack of systems. To the system of Projects.

The Third System: Projects

Projects are typically used for big and complex works, that can’t be done alone, which has never been done before under constantly changing circumstances. Projects are different from teams in the way that in-person verbal communication and team collaboration, can’t provide the clarity needed to complete projects successfully. Projects typically require extensive planning, schedule engineering, and documentation to create understanding and clarity.

For analyzing projects as a system, we ignore how teams and individual contributors contribute to projects and what is happening outside the projects.

Step 0 – Purpose: Complete Successfully

The purpose of projects is as simple as to complete projects successfully. (I use the word project to describe two different concepts: the system as well as the result).

Step 1a – Constraint: the ability to fulfill the 4 Basic Needs.

For projects to get completed some or various basic needs must be fulfilled.

A basic need is anything that must be fulfilled to complete the projects successfully, else the project will run into problems. It is an indication that basic needs have gone unfulfilled when projects start to run into problems. To complete a project, more than fulfilling the basic needs is not necessary.

One could say that the role of the project manager is nothing less, but also nothing more than fulfilling the project's basic needs. And that project management is the profession of fulfilling basic needs. Many of the project management processes are fulfilling basic needs.

It appears there are - only - 4 Basic Needs.

Projects need 1. Resources to get the work done. 2. Collaboration is needed because it can’t be done alone. 3. Clarity must be created. 4. Adaptability is needed to constantly adapt to the ever-changing circumstances. All other needs, like for communication or leadership, can be brought under one of these 4 Basic Needs.

Analyses of hundreds of problems show that basically all problems with projects can be traced back to one or more of these basic needs going unfulfilled.

The constraint of projects is the ability (of the project manager) to fulfill the 4 Basic Needs.

Fulfilling the 4 Basic Needs also eliminates or reduces disturbances and distractions. These are the disablers for individual contributors.

Step 1b – Disabler: project members are not available to work on the project

Studies show that most problems with projects can be traced back to people who didn’t have time. Often related to being occupied in other projects.

Step 2 – Empower your constraint or Remove Disablers: Prevent project members are not available.

When people don’t have time to work on their projects, projects will run into problems, regardless of the efforts and qualities of the project manager.

The obvious reason why people might not have sufficient time is when too many projects get initiated. It is an issue most project organizations struggle with.

Step 3 – Subordinate: Postpone other initiatives to improve project management until project members will be available for the project.

To better complete projects successfully and to stay out of problems, before doing anything else, it must be prevented that people are not available for projects that are in progress. Initiatives to improve project management processes, to improve project management skills of the project manager, or to replace project managers because they don’t function well, must be postponed until project members will be available for the project.

Summary

Step 0 – Purpose: Complete Successfully – Stay out of problems.

Step 1a – Constraint: the ability to fulfill the 4 Basic Needs.

Step 1b – Disabler: Starting projects without taking current workload into account

Step 2 – Exploit the Constraint or Remove Disablers: Prevent project initiation that causes the basic needs of other projects to go unfulfilled

Step 3 – Subordinate: postpone improvement initiatives after eliminating the disablers

Continue with the system one level up: Project Organizations

Project organizations are supposed to execute projects efficiently. We must also must prevent starting too many projects because it causes projects to run into problems. It causes that teams don't have the time to collaborate. And it is the source of lots of disturbances and disruptions that makes that people have to take their mind of what they are doing.

The Fifth System: Project Organizations

I focus on project organizations that do projects for their core business as an ongoing process. This can be independent organizations, and also departments, business units, or regional offices of a large company.

For analyzing project organizations as a system, we can ignore how project schedules or how projects get executed by project teams and how teams and individuals contribute. We also can ignore what is happening outside the organization. Because systems can be controlled without detailed knowledge of what is inside the system or outside the system.

Step 0 – Purpose: Efficiency

The prime reason why project organizations exist is efficient. Else we would not accept the overhead organizations add.

Customer satisfaction, on-time delivery, or project success is not what the project organizations are for. That is the purpose of projects. As long as organizations don't obstruct or undermine projects, we can forget about it for fulfilling the purpose of the organization.

Step 1a – Constraint: Executing projects efficiently

The constraint of project organizations is the ability to execute projects efficiently.

The prevailing view is that doing more projects makes organizations more efficient. And doing fewer projects is unacceptable.

The ability to handle complexity might become the constraint for growing organizations. When the number of employees and projects grows, complexity growths quadratic. Without effective systems, there will be a tipping point when organizations will lose overview. Why do startups struggle when they grow bigger than 30-50 people? Why do consultancy firms limit the size of their business units often to less than 30-50 people? Why are so many regional offices of construction companies not bigger than 30-50 people? Maybe it says something about the span of control?

Step 1b – Disabler: Initiating too many projects

A disabler for becoming more efficient is initiating too many projects. It will cause basic needs to go unfulfilled and projects running into problems. It causes that teams don't have the time to align between its members and lots of distractions and disturbances for individual contributors.

But also initiating too few projects is a disabler. It leads to wasting capacity that could have been used for completing projects. And when margins are slim, it might cause bankruptcy.

“High WIP”, too many projects, is recognized as a structural problem for project organizations.

Step 2 – Empower your constraint or Remove Disablers: Prevent project initiation that causes the basic needs of other projects to go unfulfilled

Exploiting the constraint is about strategies to increase efficiency. There are significant shortcomings to most common strategies, that make them unattractive. Most improvement initiatives fail. Cost savings limit the ability to execute projects. Increasing the number of projects causes projects to run into problems. And technological developments are slow, expensive, and highly uncertain.

But also removing the disabler, that is preventing too many projects get initiated, is more much more challenging than it initially looks. 

Why can’t organizations stop initiating too many projects?

Organizations continue to push projects because the pressure for new projects is high and it’s often unacceptable to postpone. During contract negotiations when client demand commitments, there are no plans to validate the availability of resources. And even when there would be plans, then organizations can’t tell when capacity will be available and when people will have time. Project schedules are not detailed enough. People don’t provide timely and accurate updates. Circumstances are constantly changing. And the software that is supposed to keep track of everything, is too difficult to learn and too difficult to use.

Deus Ex Machina

Wouldn’t it be nice, if there was a system that we always have overlooked, or that we never properly understood, that would fix this all? That would make it all exceedingly simple? That eliminates disablers and causes a chain reaction that also eliminates the disablers for projects, teams, and individual contributors. And while we’re at it, causes lots of other good things to the organization.

I’ve never met Eli Goldratt in person. Not even read all his books. But I read his last one, The Choice, he wrote with his daughter. For years, a few phrases from the book resonated in my head as if he was constantly whispering in my ear: “Think clearly. No matter how complex it initially looks, it is exceedingly simple”.

He is right. This system exists. It is the Forth System.

Step 3 – Subordinate: Postpone other initiatives to increase efficiency, reduce costs, increase the number of projects or technological development, until a system has been implemented that prevents initiating too many projects.

You can’t just stop improving and innovating. But most improvement initiatives die a silent death. Slow down when projects delay and are running into problems. They are the most reliable sign that basic needs go unfulfilled and there are too many projects initiated. Slowdown, to speed up.

For a structural solution watch this free mini-course.

Summary for Project Organizations

Step 0 – Purpose: Efficiency

Step 1a – Constraint: Executing projects efficiently

Step 1b – Disabler: Initiating too many projects

Step 2 – Exploit the Constraint or Remove Disablers: Prevent project initiation that causes the basic needs of other projects to go unfulfilled

Step 3 – Subordinate: Postpone initiatives to increase efficiency, until implementing a system that prevents initiating too many projects. 

The Forth System: Project Pipelines

They say, there is more between heaven and earth. There is more between project organizations and projects.

Projects don’t move randomly through organizations. They move from person to person. To pass the bottleneck they line up (pile-up). This line up starts when projects are still in the sales funnel and then all the way through execution up to when projects get completed.

These lineups emerge like traffic jams during rush hour. This happens in every project organization across the world. It just happens.

This lineup appears to behave like the perfect system from the perspective of systems theory. It follows nicely the concept of a pipeline, with a bottleneck somewhere inside. I call this system Project Pipelines.

The bottleneck of a Project Pipeline corresponds with one organizational bottleneck. All projects in a Project Pipeline must pass this bottleneck. As organizations can have several bottlenecks, for example for different product lines, there can also be several Project Pipelines.

A project can be part of only one Project Pipeline and they don't switch from pipeline to pipeline. Even projects that need to pass multiple bottlenecks are part of only one project pipeline. There are strict rules for which pipeline that is.

Just like other systems, Project Pipelines can be controlled without knowing the details of the projects (like project schedules or which resources are involved) and without knowing the details of how the environment interacts with the Project Pipeline. Even when organizations exploit more pipelines, and when people are shared between pipelines or projects in separate pipelines depend on each other otherwise. Project Pipelines can be controlled without explicit knowledge of these dependencies or how resources are shared.

Step 0 – Purpose: Flow to maximize throughput

From an organization standpoint of view, the purpose of Project Pipelines is to maximize flow to increase the rate of project completion.

Step 1a – Constraint: The ability to create a continuous uninterrupted flow through the bottleneck of the pipeline.

The bottleneck is the resource withing the pipeline that limits the total throughput. When the flow for the bottleneck slows down, for example when he or she gets overloaded and projects start to jam, or when they run out of work, then throughput drops. When there is a continuous uninterrupted flow, without overwhelming the bottleneck, throughput maximizes. We can largely ignore the influence of other resources because they have a surplus of capacity to catch up since they are not the bottleneck.

The timespan of Project Pipelines can be very long. Critical is to keep the velocity synchronized throughout the pipeline for a long period of time. Else projects will jam, clutter, and get stuck or the pipeline will run empty, or everything all at once.

The constraint for Project Pipelines is the ability to create a continuous uninterrupted flow through the bottleneck of the pipeline.

Step 1b – Disabler: Absence of proper functioning Project Pipeline Managers software

A disabler for creating a continuous uninterrupted flow is the absence of proper functioning Project Pipeline Manager software.

Most of the dynamics of projects and Project Pipelines is not visible but is very complex. Without tools, it is impossible to control. Even for a very small number of projects impossible to maintain an overview. When organizations don't have access to effective tools for managing Project Pipelines, or they are not able to use these Project Pipeline Managers effectively, it is impossible to create a continuous uninterrupted flow. Projects will jam, clutter, and get stuck. Bottlenecks will be stuck or run empty. The flow gets constantly interrupted and must be restarted all the time.

Commercially available project management software that offers functionality to manage Project Pipelines is very complex. This software requires high-quality project schedules, an accurate insight of the availability of resources, and administrative overhead to keep everything up to date. However, this software is not capable to autonomously determine acceptable solutions and requires extensive tuning and expert judgment. Efforts to implement this kind of advanced planning software often fail and many organizations don't use Project Pipeline software.

Step 2 – Empower your constraint of Remove Disablers: Create a continuous uninterrupted flow with a proper functioning Project Pipeline Manager

For Empower Your Projects I’ve developed a Project Pipeline Manager that is effective, easy to learn and easy to use. The program of Empower Your Projects helps organizations to set up the Project Pipeline Manager themselves quickly and start managing their Project Pipelines quickly.

Other commercially planning software capable of managing the flow of projects is available. Though, the Empower Your Projects Pipeline Manager is the only one that is effective, easy to learn, easy to use, and autonomously calculates and reschedules the most efficient pipeline loading for which no extensive training is needed. If you want to get in contact with other suppliers then I'm happy to advice.

The Empower Your Projects Pipeline Manager consists of a Pipeline Roadmap that enables organizations to check the capacity for meeting the requested delivery dates during early contract negotiation, without the need to first develop a project schedule. This helps organizations to prevent making commitments the organization doesn’t have the capacity for.

The Pipeline Roadmap is a powerful communication tool to align projects and set clear priorities.

The Pipeline Manager also provides a simple Pipeline Planboard.

The Pipeline Planboard signals when bottlenecks get stuck or run empty, simply by changing the colors of columns. This helps organizations to recognize situations of degraded performance and prevents this will last without noticing. This enables organizations to initiate corrective interventions.

The Pipeline Planboard also signals threats that might lead to overloading or underloading the bottleneck in the future, like projects that get started too early or too late, or too low levels or contracted projects waiting to get started. This enables timely measures to prevent degraded performance.

The Pipeline Planboard signals when the capacity for starting new projects will be available in advance by moving the projects into the Scheduled to Start column on the Pipeline Planboard. This takes care the velocity will be synchronized between the front end and the backend of the pipeline.

The Pipeline Planboard even signals when the sales funnel is running too low to be able to continuously refill the pipeline. This allows organizations to increase sales and marketing efforts timely.

The Pipeline Planboard alerts low levels in the waiting buffer to prevent that fluctuations will cause irregularities. This helps organizations to maintain strategic buffers without administrative overhead.

The Project Planboard alerts when projects are at risk, or when projects for a risk for the stability of the Project Pipeline. This enables organizations to timely undertake initiatives and take corrective measures.

The Project Pipeline Manager has a self-learning and autocorrecting Roadmap and Planboard. It learns the parameters that describe the dynamics of the pipeline from how projects move across the Pipeline Planboard. This means that the Pipeline Roadmap and the Pipeline Planboard always provide a reliable overview taking into changes in productivity, capacity, influences of other pipelines, or levels of uncertainty into account.

The Project Pipeline Manager provides a written/generated Expert Advisory Report. This advice what measures and actions to take for optimizing the flow and protecting projects.

The Project Pipeline Manager helps the organization to automatically adjust and reduce levels of Work In Progress without disruptive measures. It minimizes messages to clients that might harm customer relations.

This Pipeline Manager enables organizations to quickly and effectively create a continous uninterrupted flow through the bottleneck of Project Pipelines, even when multiple pipelines share the same resources or are affected by other external influences.

Now, after understanding the importance of effective and simple to learn and simple to use Project Pipelines Mangers, you might be interested in watching this free mini-course https://empoweryourprojects.com/mini-course-project-pipelines-decoded/.

Step 3 – Subordinate: Postpone all other activities until a Project Pipeline Manager has been implemented that creates a continuous and uninterrupted flow through the bottlenecks.

Reach out by sending a message to [email protected].

Do it now. There are opportunity costs involved when you don't.

Summary for Project Pipelines

Applying the 5 Focusing Steps of the Theory of Constraints to the system of nested systems every project organization has, helped to iterate towards the constraint of project organizations. I believe this analysis fits many project organizations across the world. Having this full analysis enables you to tune and adjust it to fit your situation.

Constraints are the limiting abilities that limit how much the system can accomplish.

In this article I described the following constraints of project organizations:

1.     the ability of people to devote time to their work

2.     the ability of teams to collaborate,

3.     the ability of projects to (fulfill the basic needs to) complete projects successfully,

4.     the ability of pipelines to create a continuous uninterrupted flow

5.     the ability of organizations to execute projects efficiently.

The following disablers that limit the ability to exploit these constraints have been identified:

1.     disturbances for individual contributors

2.     team members have too little time

3.     project members are not available to work on the project

4.     absence of tools for Project Pipelines for creating a continuous and uninterrupted flow

5.     organizations initiating too many projects

Following the logic of the 5 Focusing Steps of Theory of Constraints results in the following approach of initiatives that must be taken, while others must be postponed:

1. Implement a Project Pipeline Manager that creates a continuous and uninterrupted flow through the bottlenecks and postpone all other improvement initiatives until the uninterrupted flow has been accomplished.
2. Implement a Project Pipeline Manager that prevents initiating too many projects and postpone other initiatives to increase efficiency, reduce costs, increase utilization, increase the number of projects or technological development, until initiating too many projects can be prevented.
3. Make project members will be available with sufficient time to devote to the project and postpone other initiatives to improve project management and solve project problems until project members are available.
4. Make team members available with sufficient time to collaborate with others and postpone other initiatives to improve collaboration, aligning work, overcome obstacles, or solve problems, until team members have time.
5. Reducing uncontrolled work supply and situational stress and postpone other initiatives to increase personal efficiency until establishing a controlled work supply and harmony in the working environment.

The thing I learned from this analysis is to get a confirmation that no matter how complex it initially looks, and it did look complex, it is exceedingly simple. It resulted in the insight that one simple measure is capable of improving so many aspects of project organizations.

An effective and simple to learn and simple to use project pipeline manager enables organizations to prevent to initiate too many projects that overwhelm people. When even the people who carry most of the workload don't get overwhelmed, without letting them wait, projects will run less often into problems and enable teams to better collaborate. And when people don't get overwhelmed anymore and have time to align work, overcome obstacles, and solve problems, there will be fewer distractions and disturbances. There will be less tension and conflicts. They will be able to better stay focussed and to devote their time to contribute and to be of value for the organizations.

Of course, it is nice this all translates into more throughput, more efficiency, and better KPI's. But having been in this business for thirty years, and having spoken to hundreds of business owners and executives, I can tell, it all doesn't matter when we have the feeling we have lost control and are running behind the facts. When we are in a constant fight with our colleagues, our people, and our bosses. I've seen the tears in their eyes. I've looked through the tears in my eyes. It is never about performance. But always about not being recognized and valued by others.

The people who work for you, love to do one thing above all. Get the job done they studied for and you hired them for. Having a boss or a colleague who enables them, is probably their most important motivator.

And now when I see how beautifully and simply it fits together, although it looked so exceedingly complex when I started, I hear again Eli Goldratt saying what I heard him say during his video lectures.

“As I told you”.

Remarkably, a turning point in my journey is when I failed several times to implement CCPM myself, with the help of experts with an excellent track record. It appeared not to be exceedingly simple at all. Why? That is the next update of this article. Reverse Engineering Critical Chain Project Management.

The future of Project Management Improvement Strategies

The curious case of Critical Chain Project Management is that it resulted in an amazing amount of consistent success stories of project organizations that have boosted every area of project management by dozens of percent.

The curious thing is that despite these amazing success stories, Critical Chain Project Management has hardly found its way into the daily practice of project organizations.

It isn’t because there is no demand for improvement strategies. Practically all companies and project organizations struggle with their projects and have task forces and improvement initiatives ongoing all the time.

Or that companies are not willing to invest. Despite the burden, the risks, unpredictable outcomes, and uncertainties, organizations are willing to spend hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars in improvement strategies. It is huge market potential.

But two decades of Critical Chain Project Management success stories and shouting this success from the rooftops all the time, are not sufficient to exploit that potential.

This chapter tries to find an explanation for this curiosity by answering three questions:

1. How to clarify the success stories of Critical Chain Project Management?
2. How to clarify the failure of Critical Chain Project Management?
3. What is the future for Project Management Improvement Strategies?

Critical Chain Project Management Success Stories Clarified

Critical Chain Project Management is based on the assumption that the highest objective for project organizations is to complete projects with high due date performance. It is supposed that the best strategy to achieve a decisive competitive edge for project organizations is meeting customer commitments and reducing project lead times.

According to Critical Chain Project Management, the following measures are necessary to achieve this decisive competitive edge:

1. Eliminate (bad) multi-tasking and other bad habits like student syndrome etc.
2. Reduce the level of work in progress with more than 25%.
3. Instantly reduce the level of work in progress by “freezing” 25% of the projects
4. Prepare projects and tasks using full-kit
5. Prepare PERT project schedules for each project
6. Manage safety reserves on project level
7. Implement buffer management.
8. Prevent delays of one project gets transferred to other projects
9. Train everybody on the principles of Theory of Constraints and Critical Chain Project Management
10. A staggering mechanism / virtual drum controls the inflow of projects
11. Top management must have good enough visibility into the projects
12. Periodic adjustment to the number of projects or the velocity of the bottleneck (rate of the Virtual Drum)

Successful implementation of these measures will result in lifting/ exploiting the constraints found in this article:

1. the ability of people to devote time to their work
2. the ability of teams to collaborate,
3. the ability of projects to fulfill the basic needs to complete projects successfully,
4. the ability of pipelines to create a continuous uninterrupted flow
5. the ability of organizations to execute projects efficiently.

The conclusion of the article is that exploiting these constraints will lead to significantly better performing project organizations.

Also is concluded that exploiting these constraints is blocked by the following disablers:

1. disturbances for individual contributors
2. team members have too little time
3. project members are not available to work on the project
4. absence of tools for Project Pipelines for creating a continuous and uninterrupted flow
5. organizations initiating too many projects.

Although Critical Chain Project Management isn’t specifically designed to remove these disablers, implementing Critical Chain Project Management must result in removing these disablers, because without removing these disablers, breakthrough performance is not possible.

The other way around is also true. Removing these disablers will result in exploiting the constraints which will result in fulfilling the mentioned CCPM measures.

The CCPM measures and the constraints and disablers identify are so tightly connected that they can’t be decoupled from each other. This implies that Critical Chain Project Management Success Stories also confirm the constraints and disablers in this article and the effectiveness of any strategy that results in eliminating these disablers.

This clarifies how exactly the measures of Critical Chain Project Management result in the performance improvement reported in the countless success stories.

The Curious Failure of Critical Chain Project Management Clarified

The success stories are biased. There are many more unregistered failures of CCPM. Organizations interested in Critical Chain Project Management backed down for the implementation. Among the success stories, there are cases that later fell back into old habits and couldn’t sustain the success. Organizations using Critical Chain Project Management are a rarity.

With the new insights of this article, we can see what is going wrong.

The recommended order for empowering constraints and for removing disablers is:

1. Implement a Project Pipeline Manager that creates a continuous and uninterrupted flow through the bottlenecks and postpone all other improvement initiatives until the uninterrupted flow has been accomplished.
2. Implement a Project Pipeline Manager that prevents initiating too many projects and postpone other initiatives to increase efficiency, reduce costs, increase utilization, increase the number of projects or technological development, until initiating too many projects can be prevented.
3. Make project members will be available with sufficient time to devote to the project and postpone other initiatives to improve project management and solve project problems until project members are available.
4. Make team members available with sufficient time to collaborate with others and postpone other initiatives to improve collaboration, aligning work, overcome obstacles, or solve problems, until team members have time.
5. Reducing uncontrolled work supply and situational stress and postpone other initiatives to increase personal efficiency until establishing a controlled work supply and harmony in the working environment.

Critical Chain Project Management has a reversed implementation order and violates the postpone direction. Processes for managing Project Pipelines, are the last operational processes that get completed. Managing project pipelines the CCPM way, happens in four steps:

1.     Freeze: Pause starting new projects and projects out of operation to quickly reduce the number of open projects.

2.     Defrost: Mechanism for restarting projects in sync with projects being completed to approximately maintain the reduced load.

3.     Staggering: Plan projects in accordance with the pace of the organization (using the Virtual Drum mechanism) for committing due dates and releasing projects.

4.     Virtual Drum Adjustments: Frequently adjust the loading of the Virtual Drum to adapt to changes of the pace of the organization, necessary to prevent planned pace (staggering) and actual pace drift apart and will result in projects that jam or organization to run empty.

CCPM implementations kick off with Freeze and might result in quick temporary wins. Though completion of the pipeline measures with processes for Virtual Drum Adjustments might take months or years.

CCPM requires tons of work nobody is waiting for. Advanced planning techniques not needed for project managers to complete projects successfully. Administrative overhead not needed for individual contributors to complete their tasks. Critical Chain Project Management doesn’t fix the problems of people doing the work, but they get the burden. Also without Critical Chain Project Management projects and tasks get completed successfully. It affects everybody. It requires changes to planning and executing projects, to how people are required to do their work, to their habits and behaviors, and to the culture and trust relations in the organization. New tools, new processes, new roles, new responsibilities.

Pivotal is a reliable and properly working Project Pipeline Managers that can be used by ordinary project organizations. Critical Chain Project Management does not have it.

As we have seen, the successful implementation of Critical Chain Project Management does take away disablers and will empower the constraints of the organization. Specialized companies will continue to have clients that are willing to implement Critical Chain Project Management and will be successful with it. They doing it today.

However, chances are slim that Critical Chain Project Management ever will be implemented on a large scale. The faith of Critical Chain Project Management is to remain the unknown project management curiosity, few organizations are willing to try.

The future of project management improvement strategies

The strategy of empowering constraints by removing disablers in a specific order and postpone everything else, as described in the previous paragraphs, is possibly the only feasible direction for a new general-purpose improvement strategy for project organizations.

There are additional requirements that are critical for the new project management strategy. It must simply and predictably match the amazing success stories of Critical Chain Project Management but without its shortcomings. It must be easy to learn, easy to implement, easy to use, and easy to sustain. It must be quick and cheap to implement.

The amount of training, courses, workshops must be minimized and measures should not affect people that won't benefit from the measures. Project managers do not need to change how they plan their projects and what tools and software they use. There is no administrative overhead involved for individual contributors and they do not have to change how they do their work or need to change their habits. There is a minimum or no managerial buy-in needed.

This simple but unrealistic list of wishes and requirements is not the result of dreaming or logic reasoning as you might think. It is the retrospective inventory of actual implementations and operational tools and procedures. This exists today already.

A blueprint case study

This case study may be the blueprint for the project management strategies of the future. It a new application of the Theory of Constraints to project organizations.

Just over a year ago I published a video. Then I received a mail from a business owner of a small/medium business with a request for help. It was for a high-tech company developing software for health care. For hospitals around the world.

The problem was there were huge backlogs. Even for small projects, it took ages to get completed. Sales were down because the lead times were too long. For years results were declining.

He had tried everything already, including Critical Chain Project Management, but nothing worked. Then he saw my video.

I asked him to share some high-level ballpark figures and basic information. I received this overview with 130 projects two days later. It took him less than 10 minutes per project to complete.

We identified where projects got stuck, how to get them running again. We set up a simple Project Pipeline Manager that was equivalent to the pipeline measures of Critical Chain Project Management (freeze, defrost, staggering, and virtual drum adjustments), but everything all at once without changing anything else.

For the daily operations, two hours of video training were sufficient to get a junior project coordinator started. In 8 days after my first contact with this business owner, the Pipeline Manager was up and running in its final version, and the project coordinator was managing the project pipeline using a simple daily routine, guiding her organization towards an amazing breakthrough practically on her own.

Within two months the accelerated projects reached the end of the pipeline, sufficient for matching CCPM success stories, boosting the productivity by 36% to 49%.

Recently I approached this business owner for a simple case study.

This was his response:

The staff can clearly see the pipeline - so visibility of the issues is clear to everyone and they are committed to this approach. We saw a 30% increase (overall projects) in throughput over the first three months which is fantastic.

The highlights of this case are:

• Productivity improvement: 36%-49% (for the pipeline implemented)
• Increased output: within 2 months.
• Implementation duration: 8 days
• Implementation effort:10-30 minutes per project
• Data input: simple high-level / ballpark estimates per project
• Training: 2 hours of training for (only) one pipeline coordinator
• Self-sustaining: 1 month
• No input of detailed project plans
• No input of resource management and detailed resource availability
• No Freeze, no temporary measures
• No detailed PERT or Gantt Charts
• No resource-loaded project schedules
• No new planning tools for project managers
• No training for project managers
• No training for project members
• No change or upgrades to project plans
• No change of habits how people to do their work
• No new software or IT systems
• No Critical Chain, no project buffers
• Self-sustained implementation (no falling back)
• No upfront support and acceptance by the project organization
• Including staggering
• Including DBR
• Including Virtual Drum (based on resources instead not on project phase)
• Including Pipeline Roadmap
• Including Pipeline Plan board
• Covers automated scheduling to start projects
• Covers pipeline buffers

Take note: this is a real case.

Conclusion

Strictly applying the principles of systems theory and Theory of Constraints to project organizations has resulted in an effective and straightforward approach and solutions to make teams more efficient and to boost productivity by dozens of percent. That is easy to learn and easy to use.

I published this article, to share this new insight into the public domain.

I'm happy to help organizations to help to implement, support consultants that want to help their clients and trainers whom to teach this to their students.