An interesting video of a presentation from the Skype team on how they used the first of the Five Focusing Steps from Theory of Constraints to identify their constraint to delivering value.
All tagged constraints
An interesting video of a presentation from the Skype team on how they used the first of the Five Focusing Steps from Theory of Constraints to identify their constraint to delivering value.
Clarke Ching has created a new book to try to help people understand what is blocking their work (or life?). The Bottleneck Rules: How to Get More Done (When Working Harder isn't Working) is a quick read and got me thinking more about how I talk about this topic with people.
I finished "Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less - and Achieve Than You Ever Imagined" by Scott Sonenshein a few weeks ago, and have had the ideas rolling around in my head since then. I really like the overall premise of the book: lean towards Stretching instead of Chasing. I found that it nicely connects to the ideas of Theory of Constraints and process improvement in general.
Creativity and productivity are both enhanced by acknowledging and working with full understanding of the operating constraints. An HBR article from Matthew E May reminds me of the idea once again, "How Intelligent Constraints Drive Creativity."
My review of Simplifying Innovation by Michael A Dalton, a business novel that shows how Constraints Management principles can be applied to new product development and other areas that require a lot of innovation.
Information overload can be considered an individual problem to be solved by many of the rules I've written about in my own journey around personal effectiveness. Or it can be thought of as part of a larger system of people interacting that needs to be addressed with a systematic approach.
My weekly Google Alert for Theory of Constraints popped up this One-Minute Take-Away on The Goal. The brief article gives you this graphic and then a brief explanation.
Information (knowledge?) is the currency of business today, so making it available and making available the tools needed to manipulate that information is a critical task. Jeffrey Phillips has some interesting thoughts about IT blocking this need.
Do policies ever get in the way of improving a system? David Anderson writes about this in Superstition and Boiling Frogs.
Jason has an interesting piece on "How the lack of constraints killed the quality of Star Wars." He says, "Constraints drive innovation and forces focus. They are to be embraced, not removed."