Director of TOC System Development Department at Being Co., Ltd

Author:

Koichi UJIGAWA

Job title:

Director of TOC system development department at Being Co., Ltd.

Presentation title:

TOC's answer to Agile -- An intuitive way to be more Agilewith CCPM and to get significant result in “complex” environments

Audience:

Advanced topics

Format:

Workshop

Industry:

Project management in all complex industries

Presentation Overview:

In order to help TOC to become the main way, one of the biggest challenges is to get significant results from CCPM even in so-called “complex” environments.

Recently, methodsdeveloped under the umbrella of “Agile” are taking wing in software development and similar areas identified as “complex”; while CCPM is still a minor player in such areas. Why is Agile chosen instead of CCPM?

Software development and similar environmentscan experience drastic changes in a very short period of time. And software developers who know both CCPM and Agile tend to recognize these generalizations:

- Agile methods are for getting Agility and CCPM is for getting Speed.

- Agility and Speed share similarities, but also are different from each other, at least in terms of managing projects.

- Agility needs Speed but Speed does not always bring Agility.

In my opinion, this is one of the big reasons which inevitably lead people to pursue Agility/Flexibility over Speed, and therefore people prefer Agile rather than CCPM.

Velocity-Based Buffer Management (VBBM) was developed against the background of such circumstances in the software development environment.However if similar conditions exist in other environments,VBBM allows us to be more agile and obtain significant results sooner in these environments as well.In other words, VBBM is not only for software development.

I believe, therefore, we can bring TOC closer to the main way by conveying the concept and the procedure of VBBM to the public rapidly, and to help them successful through its practice.

Recently, the environments for which VBBM is applicable are fast becoming even more complex.In order to make VBBM more useful for us, and thus to make VBBM be contributory to bring TOC closer to the main way, we must have continuous improvement to keep it simple.Because, the more complex the problem is, the more simple the solution has to be.

At this time, therefore, I would like to provide a workshop instead of a presentation where I can share my experimental knowledge and tools for performing VBBM with the audiences so that they may successfully implement it in their projects, and obtain feedback directly from them. The TOCICO conference is the perfect place for demonstrating the method.

In the workshop, the whole process foreach phase such as full-kitting, planning and execution will be covered in detailwith accessible subjects, practical meansand tools which won’trely on any specific CCPM software, and will be conducted in accordance with the following agenda:

1.Introduction - quick review of the concept and basic knowledge of VBBM

i.What made me develop VBBM?

ii.The Giant, Enormity of unaffected area, conceptual difference and wrong assumption

iii. Relevance to the Cynefin Framework

2. Procedure in full-kitting

i.Determining features and establishing priority

ii.Estimating relative size of each feature - Planning Poker

iii. Other items need to be done in full-kitting

3. Procedure in planning

i. Setting project and iteration policies

ii.Planning a project network and building a critical chain schedule

4. Procedure in execution

i. Reporting remaining duration for each task

ii. Calculating the actual velocity and getting the buffer status based on it

3 learning objectives:

1. Have enough knowledge to implement VBBM immediately

2. Knowing the key factorsfor why Agile is becoming popular faster than CCPM

3. Knowing a way to utilize VBBM in environments other than software development, and bring agility into those environments

3 questions:

1. When there are big differences in proficiency among skills, how should we take account of it?

2. What are concrete examples of other applicable environments for VBBM?

3. Is VBBM compatible with the S&T tree (project template)?