TABLE OF CONTENTS This chapter described how thinking from four related management disciplines combines to improve the generic system for project management. There is considerable overlap between these disciplines and little disagreement on fundamental values and principles. I hope you agree after reading this chapter that
The PMBOK Guide describes a comprehensive project system (present theory).
The principles and practices of TOC provide tools to improve the theory.
Perspectives from Lean and Six Sigma help you understand how best to apply TOC to the PMBOK domain.
Lean, Six Sigma, and TOC all operate with Deming s points of profound knowledge: appreciation for a system, understanding of variation, a theory of knowledge, and understanding of psychology.
The PMBOK Guide and much of its supporting literature do not differentiate between special-cause variation and common-cause variation. Given the topological similarity of the project system to the production system (Chapter1), and given that the TOC solution vastly improved production systems, a similar TOC solution to the project system may remove many present UDEs.
TOC provides a logical process to improve a system to determine what to change, what to change to, and how to cause the change.
The TOC five focusing steps provide the steps to implement the improvement process: identify the constraint, exploit the constraint, subordinate everything else to the constraint, elevate the constraint, and do not let inertia prevent further improvement.
Improvement to the project system must first identify the system constraint (core conflict) leading to the UDEs of the present project system (or...
