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.
Protective capacity is required to allow a project to recover from a setback. Projects are, by nature, uncertain. Things go wrong. Unexpected things happen. If project commitments are to mean anything, the system/organization/project must have, as one arrow in its quiver, sufficient capability/capacity to occasionally sprint to bring the project plan back into line. The system may need the reserve provided by having a few extra people on the rolls. The system also needs the reserve that is inherent in the use of overtime and weekends. Working long is only appropriate when the situation truly demands it.
This old (1999) essay still seems applicable today, as pressures for growth and "efficiency" takes more and more slack out of organizational systems, whether mature and downsizing or young and growing.
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