TOC 4 Software

The Bridge II - turning "the cloud" into the trunk of the tree

The next step was to turn the "cloud" into the trunk of the tree, which is done by turning it anticlockwise 90 degrees and rewording it.

The Bridge III - the core problem emerges

Now turning to the assumptions surfaced between D and D', we are able to determine a sentence that describes the core problem:

[click on the thumbnail to see a larger image]

[note: small change to wording made 26/10/04]

I defined the core problem as:

We do not have a way of managing projects that allow project managers to make reliable commitments while customers remain flexible with regard to the product specifications.

This might seem intuitively obvious to some (good because it goes part way to confirming it, but I bet you are asking why all the effort for the obvious? The answer is that it wasn't intuitively obvious until I got there - I knew it, though, when I saw it).

It took a bit of work, on Jim's part, to coax this sentence out of me (and a bit of editing since).

Jim got me to think about the conflict from the owner or sponsors point of view (I was looking at it too much from the point of view of someone stuck inside the conflict) and I figured that we’d make the sponsor very, very happy if we could “meet a specific date and allow you to change your mind about features/priority at any time”. It is the absence of a mechanism to do this that is the core problem.

The Bridge IV - the injection

Using this method, the "injection" - i.e. a new action/policy/rule that “breaks” the cloud - is the exact opposite of the core problem.

[note: small wording change made 25/10/04]

i.e. the injection is:

A way of managing projects that allow project managers to make reliable commitments while customers remain flexible with regard to the product specifications.