Monday, March 31, 2014

Another milestone for Focus and Leverage......

I want to thank all of my readers and followers of my blog.  In January, I thanked everyone for taking the blog to a new all-time high of page views at 25,000 (up from a high of 12,000 in December).  In February, we almost doubled that amount by having 47,000.  In March, I am very proud to announce that the number of page views has surpassed 94,000 for the month.  So for 3 consecutive months, the number of page views has doubled in each successive month.  I want to thank everyone so much for such an amazing feat!!

Bob Sproull

Blog Posting Index through March 31, 2014......


Post #                    Subject Discussed

As promised, here is an updated posting index through March 31, 2014.  Each of the following postings can be reached by searching for the number designation below.  For example:  1 is Focus and Leverage or 2 is Focus and Leverage Part 2 and so forth.  The link to the first blog posting is:  http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4654571158555106378#editor/target=post;postID=4464386559619829406

 

 

1. Introduction to TOC – Lean – Six Sigma

2. Why Improvement Initiatives Fail

3. The Basic Concepts of TOC

4. Throughput Accounting

5. The Process of On-Going Improvement (POOGI)

6. The 3 Cycles of Improvement

7. Combining TOC, Lean and Six Sigma Graphically

8. Step 1a Performance Metrics

9. Planning Steps 1b and 1c Reducing Waste and Variation

10. Developing a Constraint’s Improvement Plan

11. This number was skipped

12. Steps 1b and 1c Reducing Waste and Variation plus an intro to DBR

13. Drum-Buffer-Rope

14. The Final Steps of UIC

15. How do I start the UIC?

16. The 10 Prerequisite Beliefs

17. Comparing Lean, Six Sigma and TOC

18. Types of Constraints

19. The Logical Thinking Processes

20. Undesirable Effects (UDE’s)

21. Categories of Legitimate Reservation

22. Current Reality Trees

23. Constructing Current Reality Trees

24. Conflict Diagrams Basic Principles

25. Constructing Conflict Diagrams

26. Intro to Future Reality Trees

27. Constructing Future Reality Trees

28. Prerequisite Trees

29. Constructing Prerequisite Trees

30. Transition Trees

31. Constructing Transition Trees

32. Book Announcement

33. Project Management Failures

34. Project Management Negative Behaviors

35. Critical Path Management (CPM)

36. Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM)

37. Tracking Projects In CCPM

38. Final Posting on CCPM

39. Intro to the TOC Parts Replenishment Model versus the Min/Max System

40. The TOC Parts Replenishment Model

41. Interview with Joe Dager from Business901

42. Deming, Ohno and Goldratt Commonality

43. Dedication to Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt

44. How processing time, cycle time, throughput and WIP are interrelated

45. Little’s Law

46. Batch and queue production system and the fallacy of a balanced line

47. Why an unbalanced line is better.

48. What prevents me from making more money now and more money in the future?

49. More on the 10 Prerequisite Beliefs

50. Motivating a work force to actively participate in improvement initiatives

51. Re-Introducing the Intermediate Objectives Map

52. Introducing Be Fast or Be Gone: Racing the Clock with CCPM

53. Parkinson’s Law, The Student Syndrome, Cherry Picking and Multi-Tasking

54. Overcoming the four negative behaviors in Project Management

55. Intro to combining the Interference Diagram (ID) and the IO Map

56. The Simplified Strategy

57. The Interference Diagram

58. Interference Diagram for Strategy

59. The ID/IO Simplified Strategy

60. Preface Part 1 for Epiphanized©

61. Preface Part 2 for Epiphanized©

62. CHAPTER 1 Part 1 for Epiphanized©

63. CHAPTER 1 Parts 2 and 3 for Epiphanized©

64. CHAPTER 1 Part 4 for Epiphanized©

65. CHAPTER 1 Part 5 for Epiphanized©

66. Focused Operations Management For Health Service Organizations by Boaz Ronen, Joseph Pliskin and Shimeon Pass

67. Marketplace Constraints

68. A Discussion on Variability

69. More Discussion on Variability

70. Still More Discussion on Variability

71. Paper from the International Journal of Integrated Care

72. Value Stream Mapping

73. Paths of Variation

74. Step 3, Subordination

75. The Key to Profitability: Making Money Versus Saving Money

76. My First Experience With TOC

77. TOC in Non-Manufacturing Environments

78. Deborah Smith’s Excellent Chapter in the TOC Handbook (i.e. Chapter 14)

79. More on Performance Metrics

80. Efficiency, Productivity, and Utilization (EPU) ©

81. Productivity as a Performance Metric

82. Utilization as a Performance Metric

83. What the Dog Saw –Malcolm Gladwell

84. Speaking at the CPI Symposium – Cal State, Northridge

85. NOVACES– A Great Young Company

86. NOVACES’SystemCPI©

87. Problems With My Publisher

88. The Why? – Why? Diagram

89. Experience With the Integrated Methodology

90. A New Piping Diagram

91. The Healthcare Industry

92. More Bad News From the Publisher

93. A Message from the CPI Symposium

94. Multiple Drum-Buffer-Rope

95. Problem Solving Roadmap

96. Problem Prevention Roadmap

97. Improving Profitability

98. More on Throughput Accounting

99. More on Parts Replenishment

100. TLS

101. Engaging the "Money Makers" in Your Company

102. A Conversation on the Theory of Constraints

103. The Key to Successful Consulting Engagements

104. The Three Basic Questions to Answer

105. A Problem With the Airlines

106. A Better Way to Improve Processes and Systems

107. The Problem With Project Management

108. Critical Path Project Management Revisited

109. Critical Chain Project Management Revisited

110. The Fever Chart

111. Comparing CPM and CCPM

112. Performance Improvement for Healthcare – Leading Change with Lean, Six Sigma and Constraints Management

113. More on Performance Improvement for Healthcare

114. Even more on Performance Improvement for Healthcare

115. Still One More on Performance Improvement for Healthcare

116. The Final One on Performance Improvement for Healthcare

117. The Real Final One on Performance Improvement for Healthcare

118. Focused Operation's Management for Health Services Organizations.

119. Focused Management Methodology

120. The Clogged Drain

121. The “Soft” Tools of Improvement

122. More on TOC’s Distribution/Replenishment solution

123. Still More on TOC’s Distribution/Replenishment solution

124. Amir Schragenheim’s Chapter 11 entry in the TOC Handbook

125. Comparison of Lean, Six Sigma and TOC

126. A Simple Lesson on Applying TLS to Your Processes

127. A Historical Index of Blog Postings

128. Mafia Offer Part 1

129. Mafia Offer Part 2

130. Mafia Offer Part 3

131. Airline Problems

132. A YouTube Interview with Bob Sproull and Mike Hannan

133. Active Listening

134. Viable Vision

135. Throughput Accounting

136.  Performance Metrics

137.  On-the-Line Charting

138.  Comment on Epiphanized from a reader in the US Marines

139.  Active Listening

140.  Healthcare Case Study

141.  Change

142.  Getting buy-in for Change

143.  Aviation Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul Client Part 1

144.  Aviation Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul Client Part 2

145.  Continuous Improvement in Healthcare

146.  Using Your Senses in Continuous Improvement

147.  A Video by Phillip Marris on CI

148.  An article about a Construction Company Using the TOC Thinking Processes

149.  Using TOC in Healthcare Part 1

150.  Using TOC in Healthcare Part 2

151.  Using TOC in Healthcare Part 3 Supply Replenishment

152.  Using TOC in Healthcare Part 4 Supply Replenishment (con’t)

153.  Using TOC in Healthcare Part 5 Supply Replenishment (final)

154.  The Sock Maker

155.  The Negative Effects of Using Efficiency

156.  Cost Accounting Part 1

157.  A Political Voting Story

158.  Cost Accounting Part 2

159.  Cost Accounting Part 3

160.  Using TLS for the Affordable Care Act

161.  The System Constraint in Hospitals Part 1

162.  Wait Times in Hospitals

163.  The Oncology Clinic Case Study Part 1

164.  The Oncology Clinic Case Study Part 2

165.  Article: Emergency Department Throughput, Crowding, and Financial Outcomes for Hospitals

166.  Goldratt’s 5 Focusing Steps in Healthcare

167.  My First Experience With TOC Part 1

168.  My First Experience With TOC Part 2

169.  My First Experience With TOC Part 3

170.  My First Experience With TOC Part 4

171.  My First Experience With TOC Part 5

172.  My First Experience With TOC Part 6

173.  Healthcare Case Study Part 1

174.  Healthcare Case Study Part 2

175.  Healthcare Case Study Part 3

176.  TOC in Healthcare

177.  Healthcare Case Study Part 4

178.  My Transition From Aviation Maintenance to Healthcare

179.  Door to Doc Time Case Study Part 1

180.  Door to Doc Time Case Study Part 2

181.  Door to Doc Time Case Study Part 3

182.  Door to Doc Time Case Study Part 4

183.  My White Paper in Quality Forum Part 1

184.  My White Paper in Quality Forum Part 2

185.  My White Paper in Quality Forum Part 3

186.  A Meeting on Epiphanized at the Pittsburgh Airport

187.  Billing for Immunizations Case Study Part 1

188.  Some Thoughts on Performance Improvement Part 1

189.  Some Thoughts on Performance Improvement Part 2

190.  Case Study on Using TOC in Healthcare

191.  IO Map

192.  TOC Thinking Process Tools Part 1

192B.  TOC Thinking Process Tools Part 2

193.  Case Study on How to Use TOC’s Thinking Processes Part 1

194.  Case Study on How to Use TOC’s Thinking Processes Part 2

195.  Case Study on How to Use TOC’s Thinking Processes Part 3

196.  Synchronized and Non-synchronized Production

197.  Competitive Edge Factors

198.  Case Study on How to Use TOC’s Thinking Processes Part 4

199.  Case Study on How to Use TOC’s Thinking Processes Part 5

200.  Case Study on How to Use TOC’s Thinking Processes Part 6

201.  Case Study on How to Use TOC’s Thinking Processes Part 7

202.  Case Study on How to Use TOC’s Thinking Processes Part 8

203.  Case Study on How to Use TOC’s Thinking Processes Part 9

204.  Case Study on How to Use TOC’s Thinking Processes Part 10

205.  Case Study on How to Use TOC’s Thinking Processes Part 11

206.  Case Study on How to Use TOC’s Thinking Processes Part 12

207.  Case Study on How to Use TOC’s Thinking Processes Part 13

208.  Case Study on How to Use TOC’s Thinking Processes Part 14

209.  Case Study on How to Use TOC’s Thinking Processes Part 15

210.  Case Study on How to Use TOC’s Thinking Processes Part 16

211.  The IO Map Revisited Part 1

212.  The IO Map Revisited Part 2

213.  The IO Map Revisited Part 3

214.  The IO Map Revisited Part 4

215.  An Interview About The Ultimate Improvement Cycle by Joe Dager

216.  Healthcare Case Study:  Door to Balloon Time Part 1

217.  More On My First Experience With TOC Part 1

218.  More On My First Experience With TOC Part 2

219.  More On My First Experience With TOC Part 3

220.  More On My First Experience With TOC Part 3

221.  More On My First Experience With TOC Part 4

222.  A Discussion on Constraints Management Part 1

223.  A Discussion on Constraints Management Part 2

224.  A Discussion on Constraints Management Part 3

225.  A Discussion on Constraints Management Part 4

226.  A Discussion on Constraints Management Part 6

227.  How I Present TOC Basics to Students & Teams Part 1 (Most viewed of all posts)

228.  How I Present TOC Basics to Students & Teams Part 2

229.  YouTube Video on Improving Flow Through a Bottleneck

230.  YouTube Video on Throughput Accounting

231.  YouTube Video on What to Change

232.  YouTube Video on What to Change To

233.  YouTube Video on How to Cause the Change to Happen

234.  A Meeting With an Executive of a Larger Corporation

235.  The Missing Link

236.  You Tube Video by Goldratt on Henry Ford and Taichi Ohno

237.  Prevention Versus Detection – The Bug Guy

238.  An Article by Anna Gorman of the LA Times

239.  TOC’s Solution to Supply Chain Problems

240.  The Nun and the Bureaucrat Part 1

241.  The Nun and the Bureaucrat Part 2

242.  The Nun and the Bureaucrat Part 3

243.  The Nun and the Bureaucrat Part 4

244.  The Nun and the Bureaucrat Part 5

245.  The Nun and the Bureaucrat Part 6

246.  A Healthcare Clinic Case Study Part 1

246B.  An Update to Focus and Leverage Part 246

247,  Drum Buffer Rope in Manufacturing

248.  The Sock Maker Revisited Part 1

249.  The Sock Maker Revisited Part 2

250.  Throughput Accounting Part 1

251.  Throughput Accounting Part 2

252.  Throughput Accounting Part 3

253.  How to Use and Integrated TOC, Lean & Six Sigma Methodology Part 1

254.  How to Use and Integrated TOC, Lean & Six Sigma Methodology Part 2

255.  How to Use and Integrated TOC, Lean & Six Sigma Methodology Part 3

256.  How to Use and Integrated TOC, Lean & Six Sigma Methodology Part 4

257.  How to Use and Integrated TOC, Lean & Six Sigma Methodology Part 5

258.  Critical Path Project Management Versus Critical Chain PM Part 1

259.  Critical Path Project Management Versus Critical Chain PM Part 2

260.  Critical Path Project Management Versus Critical Chain PM Part 3

261.  Critical Path Project Management Versus Critical Chain PM Part 4

262.  Critical Path Project Management Versus Critical Chain PM Part 5

263.  Critical Path Project Management Versus Critical Chain PM Part 6

264.  The Cabinet Maker – A TOC Case Study Part 1

265.  The Cabinet Maker – A TOC Case Study Part 2

266.  The Cabinet Maker – A TOC Case Study Part 3

267.  The Cabinet Maker – A TOC Case Study Part 4

268.  How I Run Improvement Events

269.  Using The Goal Tree vs. the Full Thinking Process Analysis Part 1

270.  Using The Goal Tree vs. the Full Thinking Process Analysis Part 2

271.  Using The Goal Tree vs. the Full Thinking Process Analysis Part 3

272.  Using The Goal Tree vs. the Full Thinking Process Analysis Part 4

273.  Using The Goal Tree vs. the Full Thinking Process Analysis Part 5

274.  Using The Goal Tree vs. the Full Thinking Process Analysis Part 6

275.  An Analysis of Focus and Leverage’s Top Page View Postings

276.  An Index of All Focus and Leverage Blog Posts

277.  Using the Thinking Processes in Healthcare Part 1

278.  Using the Thinking Processes in Healthcare Part 2

279.  Using the Thinking Processes in Healthcare Part 3

280.  The Four Disciplines of Execution Part 1

281.  The Four Disciplines of Execution Part 2

282.  The Four Disciplines of Execution Part 3

283.  The Four Disciplines of Execution Part 4

284.  The Four Disciplines of Execution Part 5

285.  The Goal Tree – A New Way to Make it and Use It Part 1

286.  The Goal Tree – A New Way to Make it and Use It Part 2

287.  The Goal Tree – A New Way to Make it and Use It Part 3

288.  Operation Excellence by Jim Covington

289.  The Saw Mill Assessment

290.  How I present the Theory of Constraints to People Not Familiar With it

291.  David and Goliath – Malcolm Gladwell’s Latest Book

292.  The Basics of TOC

293.  TOC’s Replenishment Model Part 1

294.  TOC’s Replenishment Model Part 2

295.  Blog Posting Index

296.  Overcoming Natural Resistance to Change

297.  Integrating TOC, Lean and Six Sigma Part 1

298.  Appendix 1 from Epiphanized Part 1

299.  The Winter Storm in Atlanta

300.  Appendix 1 from Epiphanized Part 2

301.  Appendix 1 from Epiphanized Part 3

302.  Appendix 1 from Epiphanized Part 4 Final

303.  Bill Dettmer videos on TOC’s Thinking Processes

304.  Queuing Theory Part 1

305.  Queuing Theory Part 2

306.  Delta Airlines Lack of Customer Focus

307.  Bill Dettmer’s Book Strategic Navigation

308.  Excerpts from The Ultimate Improvement Cycle – My second book Part 1

309.  Excerpts from The Ultimate Improvement Cycle – My second book Part 2

310.  Excerpts from The Ultimate Improvement Cycle – My second book Part 3

311.  Excerpts from The Ultimate Improvement Cycle – My second book Part 4

312.  Excerpts from The Ultimate Improvement Cycle – My second book Part 5

313.  The Ultimate Improvement Cycle – Step 1:  Identify - My second book Part 6

314.  The Ultimate Improvement Cycle – Step 2:  Define, Measure and Analyze - My second book Part 7

315.  The Ultimate Improvement Cycle – Step 3:  Improve - My second book Part 8

316.  The Ultimate Improvement Cycle – Step 3:  Control - My second book Part 9

317.  Throughput Accounting Part 1

318.  Throughput Accounting Part 2

319.  Throughput Accounting Part 3

320.  Throughput Accounting Part 4

321.  Throughput Accounting Part 5

322.  Throughput Accounting Part 6

323.  Throughput Accounting Part 7 Final

324.  Optimium Health’s Amazing New Software for Healthcare

325.  Personal experiences using Throughput Accounting

326.  MRO Project Management Case Study Part 1

327.  MRO Project Management Case Study Part 2

328.  MRO Project Management Case Study Part 3

329.  MRO Project Management Case Study Part 4

330.  MRO Project Management Case Study Part 5

Focus and Leverage Part 330


In this posting we’ll take a look at the stark differences between CCPM and CPM and why I believe that CCPM is the superior method.  If you have any comments or questions, please leave them in the comments section of this blog and I will respond to them.

In CPM, tasks are over-inflated by at least 50 percent and here’s where we take advantage of this extra time.  We now subtract half of the time estimates from each one of the tasks and create a project buffer as in the following figure.

As you can see, the new tasks times are half of the original esti­mates, but you can also see that we now have added a pro­ject buffer.  The project buffer becomes half of the time we have taken from the task durations.   The next question we now posed to leadership was, how does having this project buffer improve the on-time completion of projects?  Surprisingly, one member of the leadership team was able to give a wonderful analogy to answer this question.  The team member said, “If I understand this concept, then the project buffer works just like a bank account with deposits and withdrawals.  If a task takes longer than the estimate, you withdraw time from the project buffer, but if the task is finished in a shorter amount of time, you add the time back into the project buffer.  We told him this was a great analogy.
 

With CPM, delays are passed on while gains are lost and this is such a signifi­cant difference!  The project buffer protects the project from delays.  We also explained that we also add feeding buffers to make sure that tasks not on the critical chain are completed on time.


At this point there was a question from the leadership team on why we thought that having this project buffer would eliminate the Student Syndrome and Parkinson’s Law and we answered this question in the following way.  In traditional project management, that is using the Critical Path Method (CPM), each task has a scheduled start and finish date.  CCPM com­pletely removes the start and finish dates from the schedule so that the focus will be passing on tasks as soon as they are completed. In doing so, both the Student Syndrome and Par­kinson’s Law are pretty much neutralized. We explained that CCPM uses a relay race mentality whereby the runner completes a certain distance and then passes off the baton to the next runner who is waiting.


Earlier I explained that in CPM we track progress of the project by calculating the percentage of individual tasks completed and then comparing that percentage against the project due date.  The problem with this method is that it is nearly impossible to know how much time is remaining to complete the project.  If you use this method to track progress, many times you’ll see 90 percent of a project completed only to see the remaining 10 percent take just as long. In fact, looking at the number or percentage of tasks completed, instead of how much of the critical path has been completed, only really serves to give a false sense of schedule conformance.  CCPM measures project performance in a much different way, and in so doing, allows the project to make valuable use of early fin­ishes of tasks. CCPM uses something called a Fever Chart, which is simply a run chart of the percentage of the critical chain completed versus the percentage of project buffer consumed.  In the figure below, you’ll see three different colored zones.  We explained the different colors as follows:  Green means that the project is progressing either on or ahead of schedule; yellow means that the project is using more buffer than progress is being made and that it’s time to develop a plan to reduce the rate of buffer consumption.  Red means that buffer is being used at an alarming rate and that if no action is taken, the project will definitely be late.

 

In order to reinforce the interpretation of this color scheme, we then asked the leadership team if it was ever acceptable for your project to finish the project in the red on the fever chart and virtually everyone said no, except for one person.  We then asked, this person to explain under what circumstances that it would that be acceptable.


The response was that ss long as the critical chain is 100 percent completed, and you haven’t used more than 100 percent of your project buffer, then fin­ishing in the red is perfectly acceptable.  We agreed and told them that in fact, if both of these variables are at the 100 percent level, the project is ex­actly on time.


It was very important that the leadership team understood how to interpret the fever chart, so we then asked for a volunteer to explain what they saw on this fever chart.  Some did volunteer and explained it very well.  Tis project started off ahead of schedule by complet­ing 20 percent of the critical chain while only consuming 8 percent of the buffer. But if you look at the latest data point, only 41 percent of the chain is complete, but 72 percent of the buffer has been con­sumed, This project is now behind schedule, and unless some kind of intervention is undertaken, this project will be late.  It doesn’t mean that this project is doomed to be late, but rather it only means that some kind of action must be taken, or the project will be late completing.


The key point to remember here is that you should get excited with vertical rises because it always spells trouble if left unattended,  In addition, we explained that if you divide the percent of the critical chain completed into the percent of buffer consumed, this ratio could give a single number that would tell you how well you’re doing.  So if your ratio was above one, your rate of buffer consump­tion would be too high, while if the ratio is below one, everything is going well.  This was important for the leadership to understand because they would not have to review every fever chart for every project.  They could simply look at the ratio for each project and know if it was on schedule or whether it might need their help.

 

One other point we presented to the leadership team was the concept of a portfolio of projects.  We presented the fever chart above to let them know that this was a tool that would allow them to see, at a glance, which projects might need their attention.  On a single sheet of paper or one computer screen, they would be able to see which projects were red and yellow….those that might need their attention and which projects that they could ignore (i.e. the green ones).  In the above fever chart we asked them which ones might be in need of an intervention and they all rightfully told us that projects 1 and 7 were clearly eating up buffer at an unacceptable rate and that projects 2, 3 and possible 8, might need some work.  They also recognized that projects 4, 5, 6 and 9 did not pose a threat, at least for the moment.


There was another side of the CCPM implementation that we explained to the leadership team, key things that must be done if their CCPM implementation was going to be successful. We explained that every day there must be stand-up meetings with the key resources to find out what their resources might need.. By that we meant that they should go to the re­sources and ask them if they have everything they need and if they have any problems. The leadership team needed to understand that if the “boots on the ground” executing the projects couldn’t resolve their issues, then they must escalate the problem up through the various levels of management.  We explained that although this may sound trivial, it truly isn’t and that if this step is not taken seriously, the implementation will never be sustained.


In my next posting, we’ll take a look at the results achieved as a result of this implementation.


Bob Sproull

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Focus and Leverage Part 329


In this posting, I’m going to discuss how we explained a new form of Project Management known as Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) and how we were able to differentiate it from the Critical Path Method (CPM).  We’ll also discuss how the results of this new method significantly impacted the completion rates of projects and delve into the financial impact of this implementation.


As a refresher, we said that CPM task durations are inflated to protect against Murphy, but what if there was a way to signifi­cantly reduce these imbedded safety buffers and still be able to pro­vide the protection from Murphy that we need?  Using my example from Part 328, suppose we were able to reduce the estimated duration by as much as 50 fifty percent and still protect against Murphy. Does that sound like a significant reduction?  You may be thinking that, if this contractor was already late on projects with all of this built-in safety, how in the world would reducing these durations result in better pro­ject on-time completion rates?  What I’m proposing is that on my example from Part 328, we said that we had three projects each with an estimated duration of nine days. Referring to the drawing below, using CCPM, I’m suggesting that each project will now take only four and a half days and the total time to complete all three projects would theoretically be thirteen and a half days.

 

It was a daunting task to convince this contractor’s leadership that we could reduce their imbedded safety by a factor of 50 percent and still safely guard against the uncertainty introduced by Murphy.  In order to convince the contractor that this was indeed possible, I found it necessary to refresh their minds a bit on the Theory of Constraints.  Specifically, I presented the piping diagram and the simple four-step process that I presented to them during their initial training on TOC.  For you first timers to my blog, the figures below are what I am referring to here.
 

Our CI Team asked the leadership team to tell us what was the key to improving throughput in both of those drawings and they correctly stated that they would have to identify the constraint and then exploit it.  We also asked them to tell us how they would prevent a WIP explosion in the process, and they correctly told us that it would be necessary to subordinate everything else to the constraint.  We then asked them whether or not reducing cy­cle times at non-constraints was a fruitless exercise to which they told us that they should only focus on the system constraint and that it should never be idle. This was very important for them to understand because of how CCPM works.  In other words, we wanted the existence of a constraint to be foremost in their minds as we moved on.

 



 

 
Next, we asked leadership to tell us what the constraint was in their maintenance projects.  After careful deliberation, only one person raised their hand and explained that in a project, it’s not the longest task necessarily that is the constraint, but it’s probably the longest set of sequential tasks, where one task is de­pendent upon another and that this series of interconnect­ed tasks is probably the constraint.  This was a correct answer, so we explained that this series of dependent tasks is actually referred to as the critical path which in CPM is, in fact, the constraint.  We needed them to understand this concept so that when we presented the concept of CCPM, they would see that it too is the constraint, but that it’s very different than CPM’s Critical Path.
 

In Focus and Leverage Part 328, I presented two behaviors known as the Student Syndrome and Parkinson’s Law and how both of these behaviors work to extend the time required to complete a project.  I explained that with CPM, plan­ning resources estimate individual task times and then add in their own protection against disruptions caused primarily by Murphy. And then the effects of Parkinson’s and the Student Syndrome waste most of the safety that has been added.  So the question our implementation team had to explain was, how does CCPM deal with these behaviors?
 

We explained that while CPM relies on individual task durations as well as sched­uled start and finish dates, CCPM does not.  The project focus is no longer on finishing individual tasks on time, but rather completing tasks as soon as possible.  Like CPM, CCPM still gath­ers estimates on individual tasks and identifies its own version of the critical path that is referred to as the Critical Chain. However, unlike CPM, CCPM also considers the com­peting resources and includes them as part of the critical chain. We then presented an example of this new way of looking at projects as depicted in the following figure.

As I explained earlier, CPM defines the critical path as the longest path of dependent tasks within a project. That is, tasks are dependent when the completion of one task isn’t possible until the completion of a preceding task.  Any delay on the critical path will delay the project correspondingly.  In this figure, the critical path is highlighted according to the CPM method.  It’s important to remember that CPM determines the critical path by looking at the task dependencies within the project.  So using CPM, the critical path would be C1-C2-D1, and the project completion estimate would be the sum of those days, or twenty-nine days.  We wanted to draw a distinction between CPM and CCPM, so it was important for the contractor’s leadership to understand their existing methodology.

One of the shortcomings of CPM is the failure to consider or recognize the existence of resource dependencies, so what if, in our example in the above figure, tasks A2 and B3 are performed by the same resource?   Would the critical path be different?  Since A2 and B3 are done by the same resource, they can’t both be done at the same time. Because of this dependency, we have to move B3 to begin after the same resource completed A2.  So the new critical path would be A1-A2-B3-D1 and the new project estimate increases from the original twenty-nine days to thirty-four days as seen in the figure below.

 

So the question now becomes, what does the recognition of resource dependencies do to the on-time completion of this project?  It means that without considering resource de­pendencies, using CPM, the project is guaranteed to be late!  This simple consequence of incorrectly iden­tifying the critical path—which we now refer to as the critical chain—is that the project team will never be able to complete their project on time without heroic efforts, adding additional resources, overtime or a combination of all three. In presenting these project drawings, it was now evident to the contractors leadership that the practical implication of incorrectly identifying the real critical chain is that the focus will be on the wrong tasks which is really no different than focusing on non-­constraints in a production process, right?  This explanation made it easy to see why the contractor’s projects are late so often.


One of the leaders then said that "There seems to be a problem that when we add resource dependencies to the project, it will actually lengthen the project completion time, and that’s not what we want…..we want to shorten them."  We then asked leadership what they thought we had to do to shorten the project time?  None of them had an answer.  Remember earlier how we said that excessive safety is imbedded within each task as a way to guard against the uncertainties of Murphy?  CCPM takes a completely different approach by assuming that Murphy’s uncertainty will happen in every project and unlike CPM, CCPM actually removes these safeties within each task and pools them at the end of the project to protect the only date that really matters, the project completion date.  In other words, instead of protecting the task due dates, we shift our thinking to protecting the project due date and there is a significant difference.
 
In my next posting we'll dive deep into Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) and discuss why it is so superior to the Critical Path Method (CPM).
 
Bob Sproull