This Focused Performance Weblog is a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective. TOC is noted for its applications in Project Management and Multi-Project Management (Critical Chain) and Operations Management (Drum-Buffer-Rope), as well as in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Change Management (TOC Thinking Processes). If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Most project managers are willing to accept the notion of their responsibility for their project. As such, they're comfortable with the notion of managing not just the boxes and arrows of their plans but more importantly, the "white space" of un-pre-defined dependencies. What they often need to be reminded is that they are also responsible for the success of the larger organization within which that project exists. This means that sometimes they need to subordinate the needs of their project to the needs of another project. A good project manager knows where their project fits into the portfolio and pipeline and knows how their project (and the resources and performers associated with it) might be better used elsewhere.
One key to this is an effective, easy to interpret, and consistent means of assessing the health of the various projects involved, available in a timely and useable manner not just for the project manager "professionals," but also by the matrixed functional/technical/resource managers, by project performers, as well as by top management and project sponsors, all of whom care about more than the performance of a single project. It also assumes that project promises have not been made in a way that do not allow for uncertainty in execution and are able to deal with run-ins with Murphy's Law without triggering a crisis. In addition, the ability to even think about subordination to larger needs requires that the system is not over-stressed by attempts to put 10 kilos of projects through a 10 pound pipeline. And finally, the policies (formal and informal), metrics, and reward systems need to be skewed strongly in the direction to support and reward the right thing -- global performance rather than local (project) or even individual performance. Without these prerequisites, it's every project for itself.
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