My heart lurches as all the implications sink in. I’ve seen this movie before. The plot is simple: First, you take an urgent date-driven project, where the shipment date cannot be delayed because of external commitments made to Wall Street or customers. Then you add a bunch of developers who use up all the time in the schedule, leaving no time for

“You’re right that you can’t achieve the strategic until you’ve mastered the tactical,” he says, ignoring my question. “But what worked for you in the Marines will never work here, considering how they run this circus. Instead of one general in your chain of command, you’ve got ten generals calling the shots here, and all of them have a direct line

“Rest assured, though,” he says, pointing at the job release desk, “in order to get to where you want to go, eventually you will need to figure out what your equivalent to that desk is. You must figure out how to control the release of work into it Operations and, more importantly, ensure that your most constrained resources are doing only the work

“Oh, really?” he turns to me, frowning intensely. “Let me guess. You’re going to say that it is pure knowledge work, and so therefore, all your work is like that of an artisan. Therefore, there’s no place for standardization, documented work procedures, and all that high-falutin’ ‘rigor and discipline’ that you claimed to hold so near and dear.”

“Once you figure this out, young Bill, you will be well on your way toward understanding the Three Ways,” he says. “The First Way helps us understand how to create fast flow of work as it moves from Development into it Operations, because that’s what’s between the business and the customer. The Second Way shows us how to shorten and amplify

He pauses and then says emphatically, “Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt, who created the Theory of Constraints, showed us how any improvements made anywhere besides the bottleneck are an illusion. Astonishing, but true! Any improvement made after the bottleneck is useless, because it will always remain starved, waiting for work from the bottleneck. And any

Information Security is always flashing their badges at people and making urgent demands, regardless of the consequences to the rest of the organization, which is why we don’t invite them to many meetings. The best way to make sure something doesn’t get done is to have them in the room.

“If you think it Operations has nothing to learn from Plant Operations, you’re wrong. Dead wrong,” he says. “Your job as vp of it Operations is to ensure the fast, predictable, and uninterrupted flow of planned work that delivers value to the business while minimizing the impact and disruption of unplanned work, so you can provide stable,

“Exactly!” Sarah exclaims before I can respond. “This just shows how Bill and his team lack the necessary sense of urgency. Perfection is the enemy of good. Bill, we simply do not have the luxury of time to polish this to whatever gold standard you’re proposing. We need to create positive cash flow, and we cannot do that without taking back market