Parkinson's Law ):
As long as there is time, work will continue to expand until all the time is used up.
In short, the work can always be completed at the last moment.
In the software project management process, the development cycle and productivity are often the most difficult to control. On the one hand, it is necessary to ensure a secure development cycle, and on the other hand, it can make the team play the best productivity. Simply emphasizing the quality of people and other factors will make things more complex and uncontrollable. Critical Chain can help solve these problems. In fact, many projects are in use. The most common measure is to cut down the project cycle and reserve a certain buffer time. However, it is not easy to take more than one cut. Let's start with its theoretical basis and look at how to use this tool.
Behind the critical chain is the constraint theory (TOC,
Theory of constraints ). If you don't talk about history, Google will do it. As mentioned in <fifth practice>, only by analyzing the global or entire system at a higher level can we effectively find the real problem or short board. These short boards are constraints. TOC emphasizes such a methodology, starting from its simple characteristics, finding various constraints (or restrictions) and managing them effectively, so that the overall benefits can be improved in a short time.
Constraint theory (TOC)TOC divides enterprise management into the world of cost and the world of output. The former emphasizes that local refinement will certainly bring about overall improvement, while the latter focuses on the final results. This is the most fundamental contradiction among multiple enterprise management or projects. It often brings greater risks to the final output for cost.
Traditionally, we are used to decomposing and refining the problem, and then each subsystem goes hand in hand to solve it one by one. Of course there is no problem when resources are abundant. However, in fact, most projects have limited available resources (such as insufficient R & D personnel) and limited time (such as urgent market demands .), At this time, the key breakthrough is the best solution. Sometimes, in an organization, a product is divided into multiple departments for independent evolution, and often cannot be synchronized when a strategic goal is achieved. Local Optimization damages the overall optimization. TOC emphasizes systemic issues. A project and an organization can be considered as a system.
The bucket effect is straightforward. How much water a bucket can hold depends on the shortest piece of wood. If this short board can be increased, the capacity of the entire barrel can be effectively increased.
TOC has three key assumption: 1. system performance depends on system restrictions. (Identify the root problem, not the surface problem) 2. Local or department optimization is not the overall optimal indicator. 3. Even if an employee does not behave well, it does not mean that the employee is a bad person. (Respect for every employee)
TOC sets a process that includes five steps. What is not particularly mentioned is positioning constraints, solving constraints, and re-locating new constraints. The focus is usually on the first step. How to locate constraints? This is involved in the solution. But you must pay attention to two points before you start: 1. What is the most important goal? 2. What is the representation? What is the essence?
For software projects, it is clear whether the objectives of this project are quality-oriented projects (maintenance) or trial and error projects (marketing or marketing requirements ). Different Targets have different constraints. This has a decisive impact on the final constraint locating and problem solving.
When locating a short board, you can use tools such as a fish bone chart or mind map to help you think. We still need to analyze and verify how to locate the core issues.
In short, TOC guides us to analyze and answer the following three questions:
1. What should I improve?(Find out the core issues. Bold assumptions .)
2. Improvement Objectives(Develop a plan and verify it with caution .)
3.
How to Improve(Formulate policies and execute them. You can evaluate multiple solutions .) * For more information, see <How to Apply TOC limitation theory to project management>
Applying TOC to project management has the following definition: The dependency caused by specific resources (which can be understood as the start/end relationship in the Gantt chart) is the key chain. The key chain is caused by the constraints to be concerned in TOC. The biggest difference between this and the Key Path is that the latter has no resource limit, which causes the risk size.
To be continued...Reprinted please indicate the source: http://blog.csdn.net/horkychen
