Laconic and Lucid of "The Critical Chain" Part 3

What is a problem?

A problem is not precisely defined until it can be presented as a conflict between two necessary conditions.

At the same time we have to be careful with are analogies. When we move back to organizations we can easily see that there are two different cases. The first one is where we can identify the constraint as physical (Bottleneck). In that case, strengthening the weakest link will mean to help the bottleneck to do more. But the other case should not be overlooked. Where it turned out that the constraint we identified is an erroneous policy. In that case, strengthening the weakest link cannot be interpreted as helping the erroneous policy to do more. So this doesn't mean we will start questioning every policy which is not satisfying our needs. But sometimes we need to replace the policy.           

Since we are dealing with Project Management, then TOC (Theory of Constraints) is bound to come into the picture. TOC’s is one of the most daring assumptions or I would say is the foundation about conflicts. If we witness a conflict, it is clear indication that someone has made a faulty assumption, a faulty assumption that can be corrected and by doing so the conflict removed.

A common thing seen in industry is that 8+8 = 20. Confused…???

Once the worker gives an estimate of the work including with some buffer, then the team leader adds 2 day buffer from his side then the project leader adds one day from his side and then the final completion projection reaches is 20, which should have been actually 16. This process is a prominent process and still we see that the projects are late. Since we already keeping so much buffer my do projects still get late. Why…??

Because what we do is time planning but not the resource planning and this makes projects late causing resource contention. Both these things have to go hand in hand else the projects are definitely going to go out of hand. Also the progress of our sequential steps deviations do not average out. Delays accumulate, while advances do not. This is one place where the safety disappears.   

Source:- The critical Chain from Eliyahu M. Goldratt

Note:- There are some excerpts that have been added from my side