Critical Chain Scatter Plot Movies - Part 4/5 - How to Repair a Broken Portfolio
Channel: DolphinUniverseTV
Date: 2015-01-01

The key performance monitor in a project organization managed according Critical Chain is the portfolio overview called scatter plot. In this diagram you have the complete overview about all projects and how they are evolving. 

There are typical patterns in how these scatter plot are changing. And it’s important to understand the source what causes these patterns to react fast and precise to secure the positive effects of Critical Chain. To better understand the cause-and-effect-chains the “Scatter Plot Movie Maker” was designed. It is a small multi project simulation that allows making any experiment without hurting a real company.

Part IV "How to Repair a Broken Project Portfolio?" - shows how CCPM works to fix a broken portfolio. Very interesting even the aspect that you need fewer resources compared to traditional approaches.

Content/Learnings:
(1) If you apply CCPM operational priorities on a broken portfolio it stabilizes within a short timeframe and equals out the due date deviations - but it cannot avoid the delay of all projects. 
(2) If you want to avoid the delay by setting up project budgets/teams so each project/team has its own resources it just stabilizes the situation. There is no improvement besides that the situation doesn’t get worse. Projects with high buffer consumption keep their critical status. To get the “black” projects back to red (to keep the due-date) even more resources are needed.
(3) Using the Critical Chain operational priority in combination with a few additional flexible resources bring very fast the worst projects back in line without hurting the good one very much. To recover the projects and keep the promised due dates you need significant less resources, compared to the classical approach above. 

Details and all the other CCPM Scatter Plot Movies can be found on http://speed4projects.net/know-how/forschung/scatter-plot-movies/