Critical Chain - Eliyahu M. Goldratt [77]
"More than two," I say. "Each one of the projects has its own critical path."
I can almost hear the wheels turning in Jim's head. Many constraints... Can we deal with each project in isolation? No. Because if we do that, we'll be forced to ignore the bottleneck, and that's wrong. "Rick, I don't know. I don't know even where to start thinking about such a problem."
"Me, neither, and I haven't been thinking about it for five minutes, but for five days."
"Johnny might help." Jim picks up the phone.
A few minutes later Johnny enters. Half of his shirt is out and his hair is a mess, clear signs that we interrupted him in one of his brainstormings. I feel guilty.
He heads directly to the couch. "Thank you for saving me from my misery. I woke up with some stupid problem, and since then I've been chasing it in circles. Tell me that you have a simple, elegant problem for me, something I can solve in five minutes and feel good about."
"We have," Jim promises him.
I start to explain.
Johnny listens and then says, "I don't know enough about projects."
"And we don't know much about constraints. So can you help me?"
"The blind leading the blind," he sighs. "Fine, let's put our heads together. But first, Jim, I need coffee."
"Miriam!"
Chapter 20
I'm in my office going over homework assignments. I teach four courses, and I'm a firm believer in homework. Unlike Jim, I like reading it. It's time consuming, but it's the only way to get real feedback; what I taught well, where was I too quick, what I mistakenly took for granted. So I'm not bored. Besides, some of the mistakes the students make are hilarious.
A knock on the door.
"Yes?"
Ted sticks his red head in. "Can I interrupt for a moment?" he asks politely.
"Sure thing. Have a seat." It's not time for student hours, but if it's important enough for him to come during the week, I have the time.
"I don't know how to do my homework assignment," he sighs.
"Since when are students concerned about such things?" He laughs nervously. "This time it's important. You see, I know that we should shorten our lead time. And now, after what you taught us and what the Genemodem team have done, I'm beginning to think that maybe it's possible. But . . ." "But what?" I encourage him to continue.
"Look. The homework assignment was to calculate the damage to our company, the damage resulting from delaying the completion of a project."
"Correct. So, Ted, what's the problem?"
"I can't find any damages, I can only find advantages. But that can't be true."
Desperately, he adds. "I wanted to implement it in our company. I even spoke with my boss, and he is open. But now I don't know any more. If shortening project lead times doesn't benefit my company, why should we bother doing it?"
"Hold your horses. Don't jump to hasty conclusions."
"That's why I'm here," he says flatly.
"Good. Let's take it slowly. Have you tried to follow Brian and Mark's examples?"
He shakes his head. "They are not relevant for me."
"Why?"
"They own their projects," he answers. "We are just subcontractors. In our case the owner of the project is the developer, not us.
I see what he means. The owner of the project is the one who reaps the benefits from the completed project. No wonder the damage of not completing the project on time effects mainly the owner. But there must be repercussions on everybody involved.
"Let me understand it a little better," I say. "For your company, what is the penalty of finishing a construction site three months late? Yes, I know, you are never that late. So let's say that due to changes requested by your client you finish three months later than the original date. Does that happen?"
"All the time. Forget what I said in class. Between these four walls, I don't remember one project that we finished on time, in spite of all the safety we put in. Everything that we covered