Nimmy gives us a nice quote that appears to be a German proverb, "Who begins too much accomplishes little."
All in theory of constraints
Nimmy gives us a nice quote that appears to be a German proverb, "Who begins too much accomplishes little."
I am talking about Theory of Constraints Monday (22 January) evening through my association with Northwestern's Center for Learning and Organizational Change . This will be an introduction to the concept.
The Project Management Podcast at the beginning of December interviewed Allen Elder of No Limits Leadership, who has been doing Critical Chain Project Management and Theory of Constraints for many years.
Two of the Theory of Constraints mailing lists have been discussing (somewhat tediously) the importance of "change" and creating the right behaviors to make the change happen. A recent poster linked to Huthwaite's The Four Truths.
Michael Sampson has a great summary of the ongoing discussion about whether email can be considered a collaboration tool. The thing I want to highlight is realization that most of the problems associated with email have nothing to do with email itself.
Having attended the TOC ICO conference last week, where Eli Goldratt talked extensively about Strategy & Tactics Trees, I saw immediate parallels when reading Sean Kearny's, The Hoshin Process.
Eli Goldratt told a rather entertaining story during the Upgrade Workshop at last week’s TOC ICO conference, replete with a hand-drawn set of images to go along with it. I wasn’t sure how to recount the story, but Kevin Kohls has done a nice job of recounting it and the core conflict that Goldratt was attempting to describe.
The second session I attended Tuesday was another by Eli Schragenheim, this time describing how Simplified Drum Buffer Rope (S-DBR) works, how it was developed and how it relates to traditional DBR. This was particularly interesting, as Eli Schragenheim gets the credit for conceptualizing and developing S-DBR.
Along with the presentations, there were a number of new-to-me software providers that implement TOC solutions. I did not get a chance to see all of them, but here is a list for those who might be interested.
The first two days of the conference were actually a workshop with Eli Goldratt. The second two days are more like your regular conference with a number of speakers and parallel speaker tracks.
The first session today was a discussion on the the ways for TOC software to work within traditional IT, and it was led by Eli Schragenheim, a long time member of the TOC community and principal in Goldratt Schools.
The second day of the TOC ICO conference was another full day "upgrade workshop" with Eli Goldratt. He covered a Strategy & Tactics Tree for developing a mutually-beneficial collaboration between a manufacturer and a distributor. There were some other TOC tidbits throughout the day.
At the TOC ICO conference, Eli Goldratt spent the entire first day describing the Reliable Rapid Response strategy and tactic tree. Here are some responses to the day's discussion.
The August 2006 TOC Update from Goldratt Marketing Group includes an item on The Impact of Multitasking by Mike Mannion and Sven Ehrke.
Bruce LaDuke suggests that IT KM are Boat Anchors because they don't have a connection to the true performance of the organization. He suggests it is the realm of HR performance management that provides much better connection to improvement. But what if people are performing the wrong things?
An interesting find from Dana Dolan on discussing productivity and whether collaboration projects require a leap of faith. I focus on the productity end of the question.
Do policies ever get in the way of improving a system? David Anderson writes about this in Superstition and Boiling Frogs.
Jim McGee tells us that "Deliverables [are] the fundamental secret to improving knowledge work." I see a connection to Theory of Constraints in Jim's thinking.
Bill Brantley has written a paper that combines knowledge management and theory of constraints, "Strategic Knowledge Management: Using the Theory of Constraints for Better Knowledge Management." Rather than designing a KM system to scratch an itch in the organization, Bill suggests that KM is best used in support of the strategic process for the organization.
Ron Baker has an interesting pair of articles in which he presents the underlying problem that he has with inordinate focus on the billable hour at law firms. He talks about a problem that is familiar to anyone who uses efficiency as their primary measure: it severely inhibits growth. He also presents some good arguments on a path out of this situation.