A new book from the Goldratt family! Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag has taken on the mantle of writing a business novel in the style of her father, Eli Goldratt. Goldratt’s Rules of Flow expands upon The Four Concepts of Flow as originally articulated in the 2009 article Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (my post on the topic). The story focuses on project management environments, though the general concepts apply to many environments. I wonder if other books are forthcoming that follow a similar treatment for manufacturing environments or supply chain or sales or maybe specific business types.
The setup is pretty familiar for a business novel: The main character finds himself in a desperate situation - the family business is floundering and might be sold out from under him. Can he make significant changes in the way projects are delivered to prove that he can run the business? Or will the business be sold to a competitor with the inevitable loss of jobs?
There is another familiar element in this story, much of the knowledge is transmitted in the form of an MBA course on project management, being taught by one Eric Silver - I assume this is the same character that taught the project management course in Eli Goldratt’s 1997 book Critical Chain (my review from 2014). There’s even a familiar class curmudgeon. In that book he was just learning the concepts that became known as Critical Chain, and in this book his thinking about projects has evolved in some interesting ways. In particular, the focus is on flow instead of directly on managing projects.
There is an assumption that in most project environments, people know how to do the work of the project. They have their technical expertise or sales acumen or PMI certifications. “Working harder” in these areas only make people tired and angry. And these skills and capabilities aren’t what cause projects to be late, over budget and/or not deliver the full scope (the “golden triangle” or “triple constraint” of project).
As articulated in this book, and I deeply believe, it is the flow of work where things go off the rails. And to do a better job in project environments, we need to find ways to improve the flow of the work. The bulk of the book uses the story to identify the kinds of things that get in the way of flow, and it will be a familiar list for anyone interested in this topic: bad multitasking, missing information, assumptions about the work, everything is a priority, a focus on efficiency everywhere, mis-synchronization, along with variants of these.
Of course, the book presents rules of flow that address these blockers that create such frustration in project environments. The rules are geared around enabling individual projects to finish faster as well as enabling an entire portfolio of projects to flow through the system quickly. As is the case with many of business novels, the characters try the various techniques to surprising success - and some concern that “that won’t work here.” I would have enjoyed expanding the story with more diversions into the challenges of implementing some of the ideas - and how to resolve them.
I particularly liked the way the rules of flow were introduced via the MBA course in the story. Along with the discussion style of the book, the instructor suggests that, depending on your specifics, some of the concepts will make more sense than others. The underlying drive is to improve the flow of work - to enable people to get their activities done with high quality as quickly as possible. The specific techniques depend on what you find in the environment in question. Granted, many of the elements of the discussion are going to be familiar, so it is likely worthwhile to check and implement many of these rules.
One of the surprises for me and others who might equate Goldratt and Theory of Constraints with buffers is that the concept of buffers and the original Critical Chain solution are hardly discussed. It shows up in a later chapter as something some project environments might find useful. The clear message is that the other ideas discussed throughout the book are going to make a significant impact on the flow of project work in any environment. More importantly, without some of the other concepts implemented, buffer management cannot work. The chaos caused by the way we do things must be significantly reduced before a buffer management solution can further help.
Improving flow might also be articulated as reducing chaos. Jumping from task to task to task to task; re-hashing decisions or reworking completed activities; endless debates about priorities … these and more are signs that there is chaos on the environment. Use the rules of flow to reduce the chaos. Be pleasantly surprised at how much better the environment becomes.