Webinar - Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag’s Rules of Flow

The conference

The initial description of Critical Chain Project Management is over 25 years old. Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag’s recent book “Goldratt’s Rules of Flow” published in January 2023 is the new introduction to the subject. It is the new first step to begin your Critical Chain journey.

This webinar was an opportunity to discuss with Efrat about these "rules of flow" to manage projects using Critical Chain.

The webinar presentation is available here

About the Webinar

Critical Chain Project Management, developed by Eliyahu Goldratt, is used by tens of thousands of organizations throughout the world from Mazda Motors and Embraer to the United States Air Force. Results obtained are literally extraordinary: most implementations halve the durations of projects, they enable most projects to finish on time, and they double the productivity of the people doing the work.

In 1997 Eliyahu Goldratt published the novel “Critical Chain” faithful to his way of explaining things via a business novel like his global best seller “The Goal”. He passed away in 2011. Now his daughter, revisits the subject with all the lessons learnt over the past 2 decades. How the initial justification for Critical Chain (and hence the name of the approach) came from an analysis that the main problem that limited project management performance was the variability of task durations and that therefore that the main “solution” was the use of optimistic task durations and project buffers. It later became evident that in most project environments the main killer was in fact “bad multi-tasking”. These lessons learnt led little by little to developing the “rules of flow” applied to projects.

In this new, authoritative, description of what the Theory of Constraints’ approach to project management is, Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag proposes 8 rules of flow. But she explains in this webinar that they are not a recipe or a list of rules that must be applied, but rather a list of possible rules. Each organization can use the list as a source of inspiration depending on their environment. Efrat explains why the list is useful, but the hierarchy and sequence of implementation depend on the specific problems faced in the extremely diverse project environments.

In this webinar, Efrat describes the most important rules of flow but she also provides anecdotes of how Critical Chain emerged and the difficulties and frustrations of her father, Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt, who first imagined this revolutionary method of project management, and then improved and perfected it thanks to the feedback he obtained and the implementations he was able to carry out.

The end of the webinar was devoted to a questions and answers session.

Replay video of the webinar

About Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag

Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag is the daughter of Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt, the author of “The Goal” and the founder of the Theory Of Constraints. She has been part of his inner circle.

In January 2023 she published “Goldratt’s Rules of Flow”. It is already the book recommended as the first step in your Critical Chain Project Management journey. But it is also a book that has quickly amassed critical acclaim from the seasoned professionals who have been implementing this approach over the past 20 years. So it is also highly recommended whatever your knowledge of this way of managing projects.

She is also the co-author of Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt life philosophy book “The Choice”. She manages his copyrights and publications around the world. She holds a PhD. in Organizational Psychology and specializes in developing training materials that enable personal and organizational growth.

About Philip Marris

Philip started his Theory Of Constraints journey in 1986 when he joined Creative Output and worked with Eliyahu Goldratt, the founder of TOC and author of the worldwide bestseller “The Goal”. In 1994 he wrote a bestselling TOC textbook in French.

He is also a recognized Lean expert and combines Lean (Manufacturing/Engineering/Management) with TOC. He founded Marris Consulting based in Paris France in 2005.

Half their business is outside of France in Europe and the rest of the world. He is bilingual and bi-cultural French/English. He is very active in the TOC community. He has implemented TOC over 270 times in over 30 countries. His clients include: Air France, ArcelorMittal, Ariane Group, Embraer, GSK, McDonald's, Louis Vuitton, Procter & Gamble, Safran, Salzgitter-Mannesmann, Siemens, SKF, Thales and Zodiac Aerospace.