Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Management
• One end-point
• If I allow less time, the end date will be earlier, but the
Project is more likely to overrun
• NB This will inflate the time for every task maybe by 25 - 50%
because we will need more contingency
• For 20 tasks the probability of being late is now 64% (was 88%)
• For 50 tasks we are late now 92% (was 99%)
Doing these may help the individual, but not the organisation
Plan C: Approach the problem in a different way
This second condition is much less likely than the first [ Law
of averages / Central limit theorem] and increasingly so
as the number of tasks increases
The Completion Buffer
Task A – 10 d
Task C – 10 d
Task B – 10 d
Task A – 10 d
Task B – 10 d
Task C
Task B
Task C
Task B
Task C
Task B
Task C
Task B
FB
Task D
Planning Phase Summary
If we have two people, each available 50% to our Project, and they
have to work together, they are effectively 25% available
Real-life case: Ten team leaders, each on 50% availability: Out of two
Project meetings held, 3 came to both, 5 to one or the other, 2 to
neither
Very Bad Multi-tasking
Making more progress than planned will add to the Completion buffer
B
At day 5, task A has 8 days
remaining (of 10) - Completion
Buffer is eroded by 3 days
It is the time on the Critical Chain that determines the time required to complete the
Project
Measures and Management
• Question 2: How certain are we about the answer to Question 1 ?
• Answer = the proportion of the Completion Buffer that we have left, compared to
the proportion of the Critical Chain still to do
100 %
Agenda:
1. Reminder of what tasks are on the Critical Chain.
2. Review Project status ( % Critical Chain outstanding).
3. Review Completion buffer status (Red, Amber, Green).
If necessary, initiate corrective actions.
4. Review Feeding buffers status (Red, Amber, Green).
If necessary, initiate corrective actions.
5. Review tasks in progress to ensure earliest completion in full.
6. Review tasks not started to ensure earliest start where
appropriate.
Using Buffer Management to drive ongoing
improvement
• Buffer Management measures are fact-based and
objective
• Buffer Management meetings highlight buffer
erosion / Project delays
• Preventing the causes of delay will speed up your
Projects
• Your process of ongoing improvement is simply to
eliminate the causes of delay by following up on the
issues highlighted in Buffer Management meetings
• As your Projects run faster and more reliably,
continue to eliminate more and more causes of delay
How Does Critical Chain help our Project
Management ?
Aggregated contingency and 'Roadrunner' style
Effective due-date protection and extra effective capacity
More reliable on time in full to budget delivery performance
Buffer measures
Objectivity and clarity
Better focused meetings, better directed recovery efforts, better informed
stakeholders, less waste and more productivity
Less encouragement of 'coping behaviours‘
Buffer Management
Focus for ongoing improvement efforts
Without CCPM
• If the plan is not based on the Critical Chain, it may be infeasible
• If the Critical Chain is not known, the Project Manager cannot focus
on it
• Without contingency the plan is not robust
• If contingency is all in the task estimates, it's still not robust it’s just
longer, and there is no sense of urgency
• Without feeding buffers, an early completion will not help the end
date, because the next task has to wait for its other prerequisites
• With multi-tasking and interruptions > 25% capacity is wasted
• Interruptions on Critical or Feeding Chains delay Project Completion
• Measures are backward-looking or misdirect attention
• Improvement processes lack focus
Multi-Project Pipelines
The Goal is to maximise Project throughput over
some timeframe
5
Completion Buffer Remaining
100 %