Kanban, process design and unintended consequences

Charan/ November 12, 2011/ Agile/ 2 comments

A few years ago we embarked on developing a complex data acquisition solution to solve a business problem. Fast forward to successful project completion. On being complimented, one of the lead developers on the project said, “What we deployed was exceedingly simple. It wasn’t rocket science”. I was reminded of Goldratt’s statement, “… the key to problem solving is to

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Speed up project delivery using Critical Chain

Charan/ September 28, 2011/ Agile/ 1 comments

We talked about the following issues (On estimating project tasks) that prevent projects from completing on time: Milestone Management: Working to meet task deadlines or milestones Parkinson’s Law: Work expands to fill (and even exceed) the allocated time Student Syndrome: Negotiate safety into tasks (by extending the deadline) and use the safety upfront. Scramble towards the end to get the

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On estimating project tasks

Charan/ September 18, 2011/ Agile/ 3 comments

Estimation is one of the most important components of project management. In my opinion it is second only to the creation of a work breakdown structure (WBS). Project schedule and costs are directly impacted by accuracy of the estimation. Whenever I bring up the subject of estimation as a topic of discussion, invariably someone will mention: “We typically end up underestimating the amount of time needed to complete tasks – especially unfamiliar tasks.” The one common theme that resonated was that everyone was reasonably confident that the tasks would be finished on time. After all, they did add safety to tasks to account for variation. So if we had safety protecting the tasks, why then do we not finish projects on time? Before we look at answering this question, let’s briefly look at the principle behind Theory of Constraints.