When organizational chaos in companies becomes performance

Published on:Mit Sloan Management Review Italy, August/September/October 2025. Year 4. Number 4.

Between overlapping deadlines and multiplying projects, companies risk being knocked out.

To maintain the competitiveness necessary to achieve your business objectives,companies are forced to tackle an ever-increasing number of projects.They are in fact called upon to continually propose new products, at a faster pace. They must respond quickly to customer requests with personalized and tailor-made solutions, as well as increase their offering with project services capable of satisfying different customer needs. Trends that promote and push for digitalization swamp organizations with multiple parallel projects to introduce new technologies. This growing volume of projects adds to the already ongoing efforts required by continuous improvement, marketing, maintenance and business development projects.

The project teamsareunder increasing pressureto execute and complete a greater number of projects in increasingly tighter times. Thetime-to-market, la capacità di scalare rapidamente gli obiettivi per avere un ritorno rapido sugli investimenti, sono elementi critici per l’organizzazione. Adding essential resources to meet this pressure often poses significant challenges. There are imperative demands to maintain high efficiency and control costs and often the necessary resources are not easily available. All these pressures translate into a critical need for organizations to excel at project execution. Accelerating the pace of project completion, ensuring agility, resource efficiency and alignment with market demands is no longer a luxury, but a fundamental necessity that will define companies' ability to compete effectively.

Yet, despite decades of effort, numerous academic research and various methodologies to support project managers, the three fundamental objectives of projects – delivering to specification, on time and on budget – often seem impossible to achieve.

The vicious circle in multi-project environments

Across all industries we choose to analyze, whether software development, engineering, IT, construction, services, or any other multi-project environment, projects almost always end up taking longer than initially estimated. Because you are committed to deadlines, there is pressure to finish them on time. We all know that if you start working on a project late, there is no hope of completing it on time. However, when you start working on a project as soon as possible, even before completing the ongoing ones you were already working on, you end up having multiple competing projects open at the same time. Since the customer – whether internal or external – has expectations, there is an enormous amount of pressure put on them to demonstrate that progress is being made on all open projects.pressure to multitaskbetween them. You end up working on some projects when you should have been focusing on completing others. Which inevitably means that projects take longer than expected. This vicious cycle, representing the constant pressure to launch more and more projects and multitask between them, burdening the same people and resources with more and more work, reflects today's reality in most multiproject environments.

Decades of significant efforts to improve performance, considerable academic studies, and multiple methods and techniques for better planning and better execution have led many to believe that this is the inevitable reality of projects and that not much can be done about it. Many argue that this reality is determined by the uncertainty inherent in the nature of projects. Uncertainty that must be accepted as an unavoidable fact.

One of the experts who examined the key role of uncertainty in projects and the need to address it was Dr.Eliyahu Goldratt, founder ofTheory of constraints, also known asKnock, acronym of the original nameTheory of constraints. Goldratt noted that, even with the most meticulous planning and execution, our ability to reduce uncertainty is quite limited. His innovative method did not consist in trying to impose certainty on uncertain situations, but rather in recognizing it and managing it as best as possible.

What is the Theory of Constraints?

Eliyahu Goldratt, in his articleWhat is Toc? My perspective, recalls that a journalist once asked him to describe the Theory of Constraints in five sentences. Lui rispose che non servivano cinque frasi, perché sarebbe stata sufficiente una sola parola: ‘focus', or focus. Goldratt defined the concept of focalization as“Do what must be done and avoid doing what must not be done”. Applying this definition of focus, he has developed innovative solutions for production, project management, management accounting (called Throughput accounting), supply chain, distribution and many other areas. Solutions that have been applied in numerous organizations around the world.

Goldratt wrote his first book,The goal, (translated into Italian with the titleThe objective) to make his innovative thinking known and to improve the management of operations in production. The common belief, which he has always questioned and opposed, is that the maximum exploitation of every plant and every resource is an objective to be pursued in order to have more efficient production processes. Based on this belief, managers try to maximize the efficiency of every single machine and every single department. An objective that requires enormous efforts, which unfortunately are not rewarded with the desired results.

Managers should rather do something completely different.They should strive to consider the system as a whole, identify its bottlenecks, the resources with the most limited capacity, and focus exclusively on their productivity. He called attention to 'focusing on the global optimum', as opposed to a multiplicity of futile efforts distributed in search of local optimisations.

Written in the form of a business novel,The objectivehas become a global best seller in management literature and is unanimously considered the introduction to the Theory of Constraints. Although many key concepts and solutions of the Theory of Constraints have been developed even after the book's release, the founding principles have not changed. In fact,The objectiveis as relevant today as it was 40 years ago.

The Theory of Constraints solution for Project management

Project management is intrinsically different from production. First of all, because the projects do not have the repetitive characteristics of production. Every project is different and therefore carries many more risks.

Goldratt, however, observed that people on projects were making the same basic mistake: managing risk locally instead of paying attention to the big picture. There is a tendency to safeguard each activity, thinking of protecting the entire project, but the way in which this is done ends up wasting the safety margins adopted most of the time.

Goldratt called the new Theory of Constraints solution for project management asCritical chain project management(abbreviated to Ccpm). To present it he wrote another business novel entitledCritical chain. This approach (also called Critical Chain) should not be confused with the Critical path. Originally, the Critical Chain solution included project planning and Buffer management.

The underlying assumption of Buffer management is simple: since projects are delayed due to unpredictable factors, managers should usebufferstemporali per proteggersi dai ritardi causati da questi imprevisti. To protect the entire project, thebuffersmain must always be placed at the end of the project.

He explained how to create godsbuffersof time without extending the time originally planned for the project and how to manage them on an ongoing basis. Whenever an employee runs out of time available, they must contact the manager responsible forbuffersand request additional time. The manager must allow time, but also inquire about the reasons for the delay and ask for unjustified delays to be accounted for.

The origin of interruptions in projects

With an increasing number of implementations around the world, CCPM has proven to be an excellent technique for project management. As implementations began to grow in number, Goldratt realized that there was a problem, however. If on the one hand the technique allowed the project's state of health to be clearly represented, at the same time it had brought to light the fact that thebufferswere often wasted without preventing projects from finishing late. Initially he thought it was a matter of finalizing some details. Huge efforts were made both by him and by many other experts to understand how to divide the activities, where to place thebuffers, how to better calculate their size, etc. However, the results remained more or less the same.

Goldratt began to suspect that these were not details; the basic assumption was wrong. Before using ibuffers, the chaos in the projects was so great that all people could do when things went wrong was to point fingers at each other. But now, the control ofbuffersand the documentation of the causes of the delays had provided a clarity that no one had before. Goldratt was able to examine the dysfunctions that caused the abnormal consumption ofbuffersand what he discovered was truly enlightening. Uncertainty in projects is undoubtedly a cause of interruption, but it is certainly not the only one and often not the main one.

Time in projects was wasted not only due to unexpected delays, but mainly as a result ofintrinsic obstacles that slowed down the flow of projects.It was a stunning revelation. It was no longer a question of fine-tuning the management ofbuffers; it was about developing a new body of knowledge, identifying the invisible causes that caused project delays. To achieve this, Goldratt began to focus on flow in systems.

The concept of flow

The concept of flow is rather intuitive. It's relatively simple to visualize the flow of projects moving through the system and understand that when something blocks their progress, projects pile up. Execution times are extended and, consequently, the reliability of the promised dates is affected. It's not as easy to identify the specific obstacles that slow down flow and figure out how to remove them.

Obstacles can be seen as'invisible walls' which prevent the flow of projects from progressing smoothly, without interruptions, until their completion. These obstacles are no secret. We all know them. It's aboutspecific habits or behaviorswhich we know we are implementing, but which we believe have nothing to do with the progress of our projects or, often, we believe we are doing the right thing and that these behaviors are useful. Uncovering these invisible obstacles and resolving them can significantly speed up project completion.

A practical example

The effect of multitasking

Let's consider a simple example with three projects, each taking nine days to run from start to finish. If we worked on them sequentially, without multitasking, the first project would be completed on the ninth day, the second on the eighteenth, and the third on the twenty-seventh day. In reality, most people are required to multitask. For example, if after completing only a third of the first project (three days) we were called to start work on the second project and, after completing a third of this, we were diverted to work on the third, after nine days we would have completed only a third of each project without having anything to deliver. Dopo 18 giorni, avremmo completato due terzi di ogni progetto, continuando a non avere nessun ‘finito’ da consegnare. Please note that if we had worked on the projects one at a time, we would have already completed two of them by now. If you continue to multitask like this, your first project won't be completed for 21 days.

Really, how many of us are only juggling three projects at a time? We believe that multitasking helps us progress on multiple projects, but we are unaware of the high price that is paid in terms of time.

Goldratt said that multitasking is the main time killer in project management.In most multi-project environments this invisible element is a major cause of delays. Although it may seem that multitasking is inevitable, if we want to significantly speed up the completion of a project we must control the number of projects open at the same time andreduce to a minimummultitasking between them.

Regain control over project completion

Controlling the number of projects you work on in parallel should not be taken lightly. You must ensure that you do not work on too few projects, as this would lead to a waste of resources and a loss of potential revenue. But at the same time you must be careful not to work on too many projects, because multitasking will inevitably cause interruptions and increase execution times. In many project environments managers know more or less what the capacity of their system is and how many projects they should work on in parallel to maximize performance. In other environments, managers have enough intuition to figure this out relatively quickly.

To get started, you need to freeze some projects;if you notice excess free capacity, you can start other projects; However, if multitasking is still excessive, other projects must be put on hold.

For more complex systems, where it is necessary to monitor the number of active projects more closely, Toc offers an excellent technique calleddrum-buffer-rope, the explanation of which is beyond the scope of this article.

When you decide to control the number of active projects you work on in parallel, you need to protect your productivity. You must ensure that you complete all open projects as quickly as possible. Unnecessary delays cannot be tolerated. Therefore, all other invisible elements that consume energy must be identifiedbuffersof time. In most multi-project environments, it is not an infinite number of flow obstacles that need to be addressed, but rather three to five major obstacles.

“We cannot proceed because something essential is missing”. Have you ever heard this phrase? This is another very common reason for project delays. It may happen that people prepare all the material but are stuck waiting for confirmation or authorization. Or everything is ready, except a resource that is busy elsewhere, etc.

The belief that we can start working on projects even if we are missing something, and that we can gather everything we need as we go, is another common behavior that is at the same time a very important obstacle to the flow of projects. Again, we are all aware of this behavior, but what we don't know is how bad it is for quick project completion.

To avoid these delays, we need to make sure we have thefull-kitbefore starting any major part of the project. This means making sure you have all the materials, people, permissions, resources and everything else you need to complete the project. If there is a lack of diligence in managing thefull-kit, the risk of being stuck halfway through the project, waiting for essential things, is very real. When you find yourself stuck, to avoid remaining inactive, you start multitasking and chaos returns. Manage i. scrupulouslyfull-kitbefore starting a project (or major parts of it) is one of the main rules of flow and an effective way to speed up the pace and ensure projects are completed on time.

Multitasking and the lack offull-kitare two of the common obstacles ingrained in the way we manage projects, which lead to significant delays, but they are not the only ones. Lack of synchronization or standardization, rework, and other industry-specific reasons can also cause delays. These problems have nothing to do with uncertainty. In fact, we usually try to anticipate them.

On the shoulders of giants

Years passed and Goldratt continued to develop the Theory of Constraints and write other books, while investigating the concept of flow. Whenever he talked about his books, he said he would replace them one dayCritical chain; he would rewrite it to introduce his new insights. In 2008 he wrote his article,On the shoulders of giants, to celebrate the 25th anniversary ofThe objective. This article explains the origins of focusing on faster flow to improve performance in organizations.

More or less in the same period, he published the strategic and tactical analysis of project management, his most complete work on the subject. Although it was mainly about Ccpm, the two main Rules of the flow, i.e. limiting the number of projects in progress (control of Work in progress, Wip) and thefull-kit, already played a key role in the process.

Many people were now asking him if the time had finally come to rewriteCritical chain. His response was that he was busy writing another book, and indeed he was, but the real reason was that he felt he was not yet finished delving into the Flow Rules and needed to make sure that their application would actually help reduce project execution times to the point that he would no longer need to recommend the use ofbuffersfor this.

He would have needed a little more time, but unfortunately he didn't have it. After his passing in 2011, his work was continued by the Theory of Constraints experts at Goldratt Consulting and their associates.

After over a decade of highly successful implementations of the Flow Rules, and 25 years after the publication ofCritical chain, the book was publishedGoldratt's Flow RuleseditedDr. Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag, your daughter. It's a completely new book that pays homage to the original.

The Flow Rules are a new approach that is worth investigating further, especially because they claim to be a decisive turning point for addressing and resolving the critical points of project management, both for single projects and in multi-project environments.

If you are determined to accelerate the flow of your projects and avoid missing deadlines, the recommendation is to apply Flow Rules suited to your project environment, an effective way to manage your Operations. By using Buffer management, you can protect your projects from unexpected delays, identify the invisible causes of delays and address them effectively.

A practical example

(translators' note)

The different rules presented in the bookThe Rules of Flow
Goldratt'sand Critical chain techniques have played a fundamental role in tackling many critical projects around the world. In our experience, for example, they have made the difference in bringing the largest global digital sales program back from chaos to flow.

The objectiveof the project was to digitize the Configure-price-quote (Cpq) process of complex and customized products, marketed by an important operator in the industrial automation sector. Before adopting Flow Rules, the project suffered from all the negative symptoms of unmanaged flows: lack of control over critical specifications and requirements; invisible resource workload and unmanaged constraints; waste of the precious time of experts in emergency activitiesfire-fighting; excessive multitasking to manage what was running late and what needed to be started; expiration dates not respected.

The transformation of the project into a success story occurred by applying simple flow rules. Triage was introduced to keep requirements and specifications under control: triage was used both to manage new requests and to manage the prioritization of potential defects. The flow constraints were then identified and useddrum-buffer-ropeto determine when to enter new work into the system to maximize the productivity of the constraints. Segregation between teams was then applied to concentrate thesubject matter experton the more complex and critical elements, while simple requests were entrusted to less experienced engineers. Thefull-kithas been extended to include testing, to avoid testing activitiesstop-and-goand reduce poor quality.

The correct application of these rules transformed a project that had not respected any rules from the beginningmilestonein a perfect 'Swiss watch' which was then able to meet all the deadlines. And with an additional hidden benefit: the project saved around 30% of resources and costs.

Bibliography

Goldratt-Ashlag, Efrat, Goldratt's Rules of Flow, The North River Press (2022) Goldratt-Ashlag, Efrat, Goldratt's Rules of Flow, Rgroupé (2025)

Goldratt, Rami., Kapoor, Ajai, Mastering Flow: Implementation Guidebook for Goldratt’s Rules of Flow in Project Environments, The North River Press (2025)

Goldratt, Eliyahu M., Critical chain, The North River Press (1997)

Goldratt, Eliyahu M., What is Toc? My Perspective, in The Theory of Constraints Handbook, McGraw Hill (2010)

Goldratt, Eliyahu M., Standing on the Shoulders of Giants. This article was originally published in the December 2008 issue of Diamond Weekly, Japan. Added to The Goal 30th Anniversary Edition in Goldratt, Eliyahu M., Cox, Jeff, The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, 30th Anniversary Edition, North River Press (2014)

Goldratt, Eliyahu M., Cox, Jeff, The Goal: A Process of Continuous Improvement, North River Press (1992)