TOCICO

Steve Holt asks whether a project Fever Chart can look acceptable while another critical form of protection is quietly being depleted. Traditional Critical Chain Buffer Management shows consumption of the time buffer, but it does not explicitly show whether the people and organization still have enough capacity to absorb surprises, coordinate informally, get help, and recover from disturbance. Holt connects this gap to Resilience Engineering and its concept of adaptive capacity. The presentation begins with familiar CCPM behavior. The Fever Chart signals when buffer consumption is moving from green to yellow to red, and yellow is the point at which teams prepare recovery actions such as overtime or added resources. But that logic assumes people have time to plan, resources are available, and the recovery plan can actually be activated. Resilience Engineering adds another perspective: systems often continue to work because people adapt quietly through workarounds, coordination, and other compensating actions. That adaptive capacity is useful, but it can also be consumed. Holt describes adaptive capacity as a hidden second buffer. A system operating near saturation has little room to absorb variation, whether the example is a fully loaded work group, a factory at 100% utilization, or a constraint resource already at maximum capacity. Graceful extensibility describes the ability to draw on additional capacity before the system fails abruptly. To make the concept practical, Holt proposes adding a simple three-question assessment to routine CCPM status collection. The questions examine load and slack, psychological safety and early reporting of bad news, and the ease of getting help from outside the team. Scores range from 3 to 15. Plotted alongside Fever Chart status, the Adaptive Capacity Score creates four project states, including a hidden-danger state in which the time buffer still looks green but little adaptive capacity remains. The session closes with a practical integration: Buffer Management identifies what to protect, Graceful Extensibility helps teams pre-plan how to adapt, and the Fever Chart plus Adaptive Capacity Score signals when to react. Holt also encourages broader dialogue between the TOC and Systems Engineering communities.