Chapter 7

Question 1

What are some of the problems the current planning approaches?

Answer 1

Estimates (are guesses)
Saftey margin
LST - become critical if started at LST
Delay past on the next step
PM notified to late
Student syndrome
Multitasking - increse lead time

Question 2

What are the stages of TOC (Theory of constraints)?

Answer 2

IESEG

1. Identify constraints
   - the critical path of the project
   - the available resources
   - dates that are fixed into schedule
   - behaviours, politics and custom/practices
2. Exploit the constraints
   - maximize the trhroughput through the constraint
   (avoid stops etc)
3. Subordinate everything else to the constraint
   - plan around the bottleneck
4. Elevate the constraint
   - expand the bottleneck
5. Go back to find new constraints, repeating process
   - repeat

Question 3

What does an activity completion profile show?

Answer 3

The chance of early completion of an activity is very low

pp. 185

Figure 7.4 shows the chances of early completion of an activity to be very low – we know this from practice.

So this early completion does not benefit the project as a whole

Question 4

What does elevate the constraint mean?

Answer 4

Increase flow through that part - removing it as a constraint

Question 5

What does exploit the constraint mean?

Answer 5

Remove the part of the system that preventsthe system to preforme at its maximum

Question 6

What does it mean to subordinate to the constraint?

Answer 6

Make the constraint the point around which schedueles are based

Question 7

What is Parkinson’s law?

Answer 7

An activity will expand to fill the time available

Question 8

What is the theory of constraints (TOC)?

Answer 8

The constraints determine the ability of the system to do work and thereby earn income

Question 9

what is critical chain method?

Answer 9

it is a method that helpsovercome some of the issues that is related to the regular CPA method. No internal buffers in activities, extra buffers in the network, acceptance of being late (expected in 50 % of cases)

Question 10

why will people not tell that they are done early?

Answer 10

In the unlikely event that someone does finish some work early, they are unlikely to announce the fact for a number of reasons:
● they have the opportunity to ‘polish the product’;
● they do not want to give the boss an excuse to give them more work to do;
● they provided the estimate and do not want to be seen to have overestimated the
task time;
● they know that this shorter time will become the‘expected time’ for the activity and do not want to have their own margin of safety reduced in future, which might thereby compromise their own perceived performance.