Theory of Constraints Handbook - James Cox Iii [45]
The mechanisms used to plan and schedule projects must minimize the risk of nonproductive, abortive, or misdirected effort. The methodology also must provide relevant, timely information for management control, such that appropriate intervention occurs when needed during project execution. In addition, the system must capture the correct information for improvement.
In traditional multi-project environments, a basic problem is the inability to ensure adequate progress on the projects already underway while simultaneously having the flexibility to take advantage of new business opportunities as they arise. Typically, new projects are entered into a system as soon as they are funded and few organizations appear to be able to successfully establish stable global project priorities.
Traditional Survivor Behaviors
Human resources may be assigned to three to five major projects, sometimes in addition to their functional duties. To deal with skewed task times, official resource estimates, those that are turned in to management, generally are two or more times their estimated dedicated durations. Dedicated duration estimates are those that could be met if resources were allowed to work without interruption. However, most project employees do not work without interruption.
Forced multitasking induces additional stress on already heavily loaded resources. In spite of the widespread praise for multitasking ability, most people realize that they are more productive when they concentrate their effort on one task (Rubenstein et al., 2001; Shellenbarger, 2003, 169).
Three behaviors typically are used by resources to deal with chaotic project situations: (1) student syndrome, (2) sandbagging, and (3) engaging in Parkinson’s Law. They are discussed in the following sections.
Student Syndrome
The name student syndrome (Goldratt, 1997) developed from a common student behavior of lobbying for an extension to an exam date that is two weeks away (typically some time after an upcoming school event) so they can study. However, most students only begin studying for the exam a few hours or, at best, a couple of days before it is scheduled—whether or not they receive the requested delay. While this behavior is typical for students, it also is typical for the rest of us.
Negotiating additional time would appear to enable us to ensure on-time completion of current assignments. Of course, when we wait until the last possible minute to begin a new assignment, we should expect that we would run into problems we had not anticipated. Therefore, meeting the promised due date may be extremely difficult and stressful.
Sandbagging Completed Work
Sandbagging refers to holding completed work until a more beneficial time arrives to officially acknowledge its completion. A resource may have fought long and hard for the time allotted to its task. Therefore, if a task is completed early, there may be a very real reluctance to pass it on to the next activity, since their next task duration estimate may be discounted accordingly. Also, acknowledging an early completion frequently results in additional assigned work, increasing a resource’s workload even more. In order to protect one’s reputation and believing that the next resource will not be prepared to take advantage of an early start if one discloses early completion, most experienced resources will not pass on their work until just prior to, or on, the due date.
Sales people (including those who sell projects) who have met their quotas regularly engage in sandbagging. A similar delay in passing on work, but due to a different motivation, is work completion delays due to Parkinson’s Law, discussed next.
“Improving” a Completed Task
Rather than merely holding completed work, if work on a task proceeds extremely well (which normally would enable the work to be completed before the due date), there is a tendency among some resources to continue improving the completed work. This sometimes is referred to as “polishing” work and has come to be