What is TOC PM?

Uncertainty is why we need project management. How we manage for uncertainty is at the core of improvement of project performance, getting projects done both faster and with better reliability of the promised deliverable dates. The approach to project management known as "Critical Chain Scheduling and Buffer Management" provides mechanisms to allow a "whole system" view of projects. It identifies and protects what's critical from inevitable uncertainty, and as a result, avoids major impact of Parkinson's Law at the task level while accounting for Murphy's Law at the project level.
                                 
Project managers and teams need to shift their attention from assuring the achievement of task estimates and intermediate milestones to assuring the only date that matters -- the final promised due date. Safety that is typically built into tasks to cover Murphy's Law is inefficient, leading to longer than necessary (or acceptable) schedules, and apparently ineffective, given the impact of Parkinson's Law from which many projects suffer.

Many people who encounter TOC for the first time, look for a simple explanation of the body of knowledge. In essence, TOC is a process of ongoing improvement for any system, be it business, personal or environmental. It is a more effective approach than all the other approaches bandied about, since it is based on a common sense approach to change.

This can be described as follows:

• A system's current performance is determined and dictated by the constraint that exists within it.
• Performance of the system can only be improved if the constraint is permanently removed.
• When the constraint is removed, the system moves to higher level of performance, and immediately encounters another constraint.

       The Theory of Constraints is very effective at increasing the performance of business systems