About this Presentation
Buffers are a common response to variation. Like variation, they are everywhere, including in project plans. Many people feel a conflict in project management between predictability, which requires safety time or buffers; and motivation, which requires squeezing out safety time. People usually either ignore the conflict, picking one side or the other; or they compromise, by adding some safety time but never enough. In this presentation, Rob Newbold discusses why these standard approaches create the very problems they are intended to eliminate. He shows how to evaporate the cloud to get predictability, motivation, and speed. To get there, he presents a rigorous definition of buffers and gives some surprising examples in order to show you that buffers are much more common than you may think. He concludes by showing how buffered critical chain schedules and some new visualizations can help you to motivate your teams.
What Will You Learn
To help you get the most value from this session, we’ve highlighted a few key points. These takeaways capture the main ideas and practical insights from the presentation, making it easier for you to review, reflect, and apply what you’ve learned.
Buffers are crucial in managing variation in project management and they have both costs and benefits.
Deadlines often obscure variation and lead to the misuse of buffers.
Positive, team-oriented motivations can be more effective than negative ones in project management.
Instructor(s)
Rob Newbold
Rob Newbold, CEO and founder of ProChain Solutions, is one of the world’s leading experts on Critical Chain project scheduling and management. He has forty years’ experience developing process improvements in various fields. Rob is a frequent writer and speaker and holds degrees from Stanford University, SUNY Stony Brook, and Yale University. He is the author of the books Islands of Stability (ProChain Press, 2019), The Project Manifesto (ProChain Press, 2014), The Billion Dollar Solution (ProChain Press, 2008) and Project Management in the Fast Lane (St. Lucie Press, 1998) and was a contributing author to the TOC Handbook from McGraw-Hill. He was presented with a TOCICO Lifetime Achievement award by TOCICO in 2023 and a TOC Excellence Award by TOCPA in 2024. ProChain Solutions has been a leading provider of software, methodology, and implementation services for Critical Chain solutions since 1997.