Avraham Mordoch presented the next iteration on his CCPM Maturity Model that I reported on from last year's conference. I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't more new material from what I heard last year, but it was a good time to think through how I have done CCPM implementations. I really like the idea that you need to consider the context of the organization in which CCPM is being implemented to decide your actions and direction.
One item I didn't hear last time has to do with early stages of getting into CCPM planning and development of the drum resource. Mordoch strongly suggests that if you see a resource that is loaded at 90% or more, do NOT use that as the drum resource. Instead, this is an indication that there is a problem with that resource and the issue should be dealt with. Selecting this resource as the drum leads to a danger of pushing the system back into chaos.
An open topic Mordoch finished with was the idea that it takes some time to move an organization from "chaos" to the state where they begin working under CCPM. The question: how to improve the speed without compromising. He noted that often the customer is quite happy with the first steps of moving from that chaos state to some initial order. They may want to stop, instead of achieving the next level of performance and flow.
This connects to a hallway conversation that I had with some other attendees. TOC practitioners have done many, many implementations. And they often see this effect: that implementations slow down, stop or even degrade after a time. Why don't we use the TOC principles and provide guidance to help them see "what's next" before they get to this point? Are we too satisfied with the initial results as practitioners?