Take Good Care of Constrained Project Resources
April 16th, 2003 by HalArticle Series - Down n Dirty with the Theory of Constraints
Multi-tasking can be eliminated (Ok, maybe significantly reduced). Day 4 in the TOC series.
We've been discussing constraints, resources in contention, and multi-tasking. Frank's posting yesterday showing the red, green, and blue tasks shows clearly that multi-tasking delays completion of some activities with no advantage to others. How could it be reasonable to follow a rule that resources in contention can only work on one thing at a time? Particularly in the world of projects where we often don't know what is needed from that resource 'til the last minute?
By queuing up ready work for people (resources) they can start work that will be finished.
The trick (technique) is to always have the work for a constrained resource in a condition to be started and finished PRIOR to the resource starting. Have you ever watched a person climb a ladder only to have to come down again to get materials or tools? Have you ever been asked to do something for someone and the person wasn't able to tell you what it meant when done is done? Joe offered this example yesterday:
The key? Making work ready for Loren to work on it. We have instituted standards for him to work on a request. No specs for the loading of a roof?? No truss analysis. Wow. That's a shock to the system of those who were used to calling and letting Loren work on unclear requests. But it is vital. If we have a true constraint then there must be a queue of ready work in front of him.
By queuing up ready work for people (resources) they can start work that will be finished. Finishing work on projects usually means work is released for others on the project. Further, when work is in a condition to be started and finished, the work gets finished reliably.
But how do you do that? How do you know ALL of what needs to be done? You as a project manager alone don't know. You plan with a team of people who are responsible for assigning work on your project. You do this every week looking out a month or so. In these conversations you will discover what resource will be constrained and what is yet to be addressed for making the work ready. These are the conversations to assign responsibility for addressing each of the issues that keeps the future work from happening as intended.
You know the routine — time to visit Frank and Joe.
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