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TOC in Project Management · Lesson 1 of 6

Projects and the problem with time

What makes a project a project, the problems almost every project shares, and why the real issue is not uncertainty but the time we waste ourselves.

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What makes something a project?

A project is a one-time effort with a good amount of the unknown in it. Uncertainty is its hallmark: you have never done exactly this before, so you can’t know exactly how long each piece will take.

Projects exist in every organisation, not just in construction or engineering:

  • Installing a new machine
  • Launching a new product
  • Opening a new market
  • Implementing an ERP system
  • And outside work: making a film, organising a wedding

Project environments differ a lot. By industry: engineering-procurement-construction (EPC), engineer-to-order, new product development, software. By how they share resources: a single big project, many projects sharing the same people, or a mix. And by what makes them complex: how much there is to see and coordinate, how many pieces must integrate, how much regulation applies. Yet the same few problems turn up in almost all of them.

The typical problems

Ask project managers what goes wrong, and almost all of them list the same things:

  • Due dates are not met
  • There are too many changes
  • Resources aren’t available when they are needed
  • Licences, permissions and decisions aren’t ready in time
  • Priorities clash between projects
  • Costs overrun
  • There is too much rework

Time, cost, scope

Projects are judged on three things: time, cost and scope (including quality). Look closely at the compromises made on cost and scope, and you’ll find most of them were made under pressure of time: a feature dropped to make the date, overtime and air-freight to recover a delay. Manage time well, and much of the rest falls into place.

The usual story about delays

Ask project teams why their projects are late and you’ll hear a familiar narrative: delays hurt our financials, most projects are badly delayed, and the delays are not in our control. The customer was late with information, the approval took months, the supplier slipped.

Pause and think: a project took 10 months from start to finish. Roughly how much of that time was someone actually working on it?

  • Almost all of it: 9 months or more
  • About two thirds
  • A third or less; the rest was waiting, switching, redoing and external delays
  • It’s impossible to know

When teams map it honestly, the pure work, the touch time, is often around a third of the elapsed time or less. The rest splits into two very different kinds of delay.

Two kinds of lost time

Break the total execution lead time down:

  • Touch time: the actual work. Often around 30%.
  • External delays: customers, authorities, suppliers. Murphy, uncertainty, genuine risk.
  • Internal wastages: time the organisation loses by itself, through interruptions (people pulled to other work), slow-downs (waiting for inputs, decisions, resources) and rework.

Exercise: where does each day go?

  • The design engineer drafts the layout
  • The engineer is pulled onto another project’s urgent review for two days
  • The customer takes three weeks to approve the drawings
  • The purchase order waits a week for an internal signature
  • A part is remade because it was built from an unapproved drawing
  • A permit is delayed by a change in regulations

The usual story blames the external delays. But the internal wastages are typically larger, and they are in our control. Plug most of them, and you have plenty of time to absorb the external delays you can’t avoid. That is what the rest of this course is about.

Check your understanding

Answer all five. Get four right to complete the lesson.

1. What typifies a project?

  • It is always large
  • It is a one-time effort with a good amount of uncertainty
  • It is always in construction
  • It has no deadline

Uncertainty is the hallmark of a project.

2. Most compromises on cost and scope are made…

  • By the finance team
  • At the start of the project
  • Because of bad suppliers
  • Under pressure of time

Manage time well and much of the rest falls into place.

3. Interruptions, slow-downs and rework are…

  • Internal wastages, largely in our control
  • External delays
  • Touch time
  • Unavoidable

They are time the organisation loses by itself.

4. Touch time in a typical project is often around…

  • 90% of the lead time
  • 70%
  • 30% or less
  • 0%

Most of the elapsed time is waiting, switching and redoing.

5. Why focus on internal wastages rather than external delays?

  • External delays don’t exist
  • Internal wastages are usually larger and in our control; plugging them frees time to absorb external delays
  • Customers prefer it
  • It is required by PMBOK

You can’t stop a customer being late, but you can stop wasting your own time.