I've been invited to speak at this year's TOCPA – TOC Practitioners Alliance - conference in Tallinn, Estonia, next month. How cool is that!? I'll be meeting a whole of email friends for the first time in person.
I'm putting on a session about how to deliver software the TOC way.
I view Agile as a TOC solution.
Agile uses many TOC principles and practices. We use the TOC replenishment solution: think of how Zara blitz their competitors by not using long range forecasts (which is what detailed, 300-page, requirements documents are) and adopt a rapid-replenishment instead. We use the Critical Chain Project Management solution: think how you have to manage differently when you treat estimates as estimates, not commitments; think how we buffer to protect your delivery date - CCPM buffers with time, we buffer with low-value features. We use the TOC Manufacturing/Operations solution too: think about how we transform our project systems into flow systems then (almost always) discover that testing is our efficiency bottleneck and customer-engagment is our effectiveness bottleneck.
So, I'm going to Estonia!
