18 February 2009

TOC Update: Moving at a Decent Pace

There's lots to say about the girls growth; but, for the last couple of hours they've been asleep and I've been focusing on work. I realize that most of you aren't interested in my work life. No biggie. Feel free to ignore this post. Writing it helps get it off my chest.

The Theory of Constraints idea continues to pick up steam. I've been evangelizing the idea at least once a day since returning to work last Monday. There's only been one person in the mix who wasn't convinced; but, he's a pretty influential person. Everyone else, including some with more influence, see where I'm heading and agree that it really could be a big win for Adobe. I've also got the presentation nearly ready for the end of the month senior management offsite. I've got two hours with about 15 senior managers across the suite. Many of them I've already hit up on the idea, so it shouldn't be that difficult to get through the offsite.

The sales pitch continues to get better as well. I've got it down to about 2 minutes to cover the most important ideas. It needs to shrink down to 20 seconds before I go after the Sr. VP of engineering. I'll have to hit up the CEO sometime this summer if this is really going to succeed. I've also converted two people to my crusade who want to put in energy to make it happen, one of whom can help shake up the business folks at Adobe to see things our way (my network is mostly on the engineering side.)

Evangelization (or salesmanship if you prefer) will take up the rest of February and probably one to two weeks of March before I roll up my sleeves and start pushing for actual funding. Then the real politicking begins. It won't take much to get going, probably about $200K for the first six months. After that it could get expensive. But the payoff looks to be in the $1B - $2B range for the second year, so its really worth pursuing.

Wish me luck!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I ran into your blog and was struck by your efforts to get acceptance/buy-in for the Theory Of Constraints approach to Project management in your organization. I work for Eli Goldratt and wanted to share with you some sources of additional information to help you and your organization. Our Marketing web-site www.toc-goldratt.com has books, DVDs, web-casts on all topics in the Theory Of Constraints (TOC) including Project Management. Eli's book - Critical Chain - as well as his latest web-cast on Project Management would be of great use to you. In the web-cast Eli uses the latest TOC tool - the Strategy and Tactics tree - to illustrate how Critical Chain methods can be implemented quickly and with huge benefits.

I am part of Goldratt Schools which focuses on providing Instructor led education and training in all aspects of TOC. We can help you with programs from one -day overviews to full detailed training in Critical Chain and how to implement.

I can see from your blog that you are making headway. Keep up the steady pressure and it will yield positive results. In the mean time check out the resources for you to learn more on your own and if at any point you feel you can use more help please contact me at ShriSrikanth@goldrattgroup.com

Unknown said...

Thanks for the information and offers. I'll check them out. Cheers!