Theory of Constraints Project Management

Introduction

Whether your organization manages stand-alone or multiple projects, whether those projects are small or large, whether your customers are internal or external, or whether the nature of the work performed is product development, construction, design, IT, or service; most projects are difficult to manage because of two things:

1. They involve uncertainty, and
2. They involve three different and opposing commitments: due date, budget, and content

In organizations that attempt to manage multiple concurrent projects with common, shared resources, the job is even more challenging. Managers can quickly find themselves on “project overload” with continual resource shortages and great difficulty in determining which tasks are truly the most important.

If this is beginning to sound familiar, then you are probably experiencing some of these problems in your organization:

• There are difficulties completing projects on time, within budget and with full content.
• There is too much rework activity.
• Promised lead times are longer than desired.
• Existing project work is not complete before new projects require a shifting in priorities.
• Project Managers and Resource Managers have frequent conflicts about priorities and resource commitments.
• Problems in one project cascade into problems in other projects.
• Some projects are abandoned or completed without the organization gaining the promised benefit.
• The organization is too slow responding to important opportunities.

This paper provides a brief introduction into the basics of TOC Project Management, showing how the solution addresses the underlying root causes of the problems listed above. It is organized in the context of answering three very important questions:

1. “What To Change?”
2. “To What To Change?”
3. “How To Cause The Change?”