Theory of Constraints Project Management

TOC Project Management: Appropriate Work Behaviors
As discussed earlier, the coping mechanisms that managers put in place to deal with the variable nature of project work accomplish the exact opposite of what was intended – safety is placed everywhere and then wasted by the behaviors that people must adopt to protect themselves.

At the core of TOC Project Management is a work behavior called the Relay Runner work ethic. Briefly stated, this behavior calls for people to begin work as soon as they have been assigned to a task, to work continuously until the task’s completion criteria have been met, and to provide immediate notification of that completion. The project network is based upon the aggressive but possible times, but people are held accountable only to the work behavior, not achieving the aggressive but possible task duration estimate. By its very definition, all concerned recognize that there is some probability that the aggressive but possible time can be beat, but also some probability that the time estimate cannot be met.

In most overloaded, heavily multi-tasked work environments, people are frequently shifted back and forth between tasks as priorities change. That unavoidably results in a large number of tasks being idle for significant amounts of time, essentially queuing to be worked on. People utilization is very high, probably too high. Task utilization is low, definitely too low. Suppose, for example, a person is given a ten-day task to do –one of the many they are expected to perform simultaneously. Every other day, they get pulled off that task to do other, more urgent task work. That means the ten-day task will take 19 days to complete – 19 days of “elapsed time” to accommodate 10 days of “touch time.” If that task is on the longest path of the project, those 9 days of “task idle time” translate directly into a 9-day delay in project completion. The unfortunate thing is that, in many heavily multi-tasked work environments, overall “task idle time” is a depressingly large number.

To make improvements, an organization must recognize the need for work behaviors to change and make it safe for people to resist unmerited requests for multi-tasking, to report early finishes, and to come forward to ask for help when they are stuck without fearing a lowered performance evaluation. This requires a significant shift in people’s thinking at all levels of the organization but, properly executed, delivers dramatically improved results.