TOCICO

The recent days of the worldwide Corona epidemic are the trigger for the thoughts I have about the actual functionality of the buffer management (BM) methodology and how it should play a role in protecting our projects. I assume that we all know that the project buffer, and the associated feeding buffers, are our main ammunition against the uncertainties that are spread along all the projects' routes. This is if our projects are planned and executed according to the critical chain methodology which is a derivative of the theory of constraints. Having said that, the main question we should ask ourselves is if the buffers, that normally are planned to be 50% of the associated chain, are good enough against all types of uncertainties or are there any type of uncertainty that the buffers are not supplying us the needed protection and we should think about additional, or maybe another, type of protection. Before listing the main contributors for the deep penetration into the buffers, there is a need to emphasize that the buffers conceptually should be consumed and most of the times they are fully consumed. We should be worried about the too many projects that are still late in spite of the normally very generous buffers. These projects are the reason for my presentation. The list of contributors to the penetration into the buffers: 1. Late start of a project, it consumes buffer time in spite the fact that the buffers are not designed for protection against late start. How should we handle the late start? 2. Regular delays in completion of tasks, these are the common and expected uncertainty that are mostly due to low probability of completion of tasks on time. 3. Unavailability of a resource (Still busy in another project), very typical to a multi-projects environment and should be treated with the capacity buffer that can serve as the synchronizer between the projects sharing common resources. 4. Grey Swan events which are a potentially very significant event that is considered unlikely to happen but still possible (can be internal as well external to a project). 5. Black Swan events which are unpredictable event that are beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences (also can be internal as well external to a project). Only one (the second) out of the above five contributors is perfectly dealt with the regular buffer management methodology. What should we do to protect our projects regarding the other contributors? By the way, the regular statistics suggests that about 30% of IT projects are cancelled before completion. I presume that many of these cancellations are due to the last two contributors. We should do something different in regard to them and not just pray and hold ours fingers. Video length: 38:57. PDF: 21 slides.