Andreas Scherer - Be Fast or Be Gone

Praise for Be Fast or Be Gone:

Be Fast or Be Gone is a fascinating treatment of the power of focus, applied to the often complex world of project and strategy management. The answers to increased productivity, though simple, are often subtle and hidden beneath old and accepted practices, requiring an incisive and radically rational viewpoint. Scherers book (and the ProChain process it reflects) beautifully illumines such a process.

David Allen, Author, Getting Things Done: the Art of Stress-Free Productivity

Andreas Scherer provides a highly engaging explanation of Critical Chain and describes its application to development projects. Every R&D director should read this book and every project manager should become a Critical Chain expert. Be Fast or Be Gone will open your eyes to the possibilities of realistic schedules and on-time project completion.

Dr. Steven D. Eppinger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management

Using the principles espoused in Andreas Scherers book Be Fast or Be Gone , pharmaceutical companies can substantially shorten their research and development timelines, allowing drugs to be available to patients much more quickly.

Dr. Hugh Davis, Vice President, Centocor a Johnson and Johnson company

I found this heartfelt tale to be a grabber. What a powerful way to illuminate that racing the clock is of vital import, not only to a companys leadership posture, but ultimately to the huge impact it can have on customers and patients well-being!

Dr. Fred Wiersema, Customer Strategist and Author, The Discipline of Market Leaders

Be Fast or Be Gone puts meaning into accelerating projects. Better yet, it puts METHOD into achieving Dramatic, Reliable Improvements in Speed and content Quality for any project management environment. A gripping , understandable, helpful novel for every person wanting to get things done!

Professor James R. Holt, Engineering & Technology Management, Washington State University

Riveting. Finally, a book that shows us in a practical and engaging way the real impact project management and Critical Chain concepts can have. This story of a fathers quest to save his little boy is extremely real; you will easily identify with the books characters. A must read.

Eric Morfin, Ph.D., PMP; Founder, BioPharmaPM; Partner, Critical Skills Inc.

Be Fast or Be Gone

Racing the Clock with
Critical Chain Project Management

Andreas Scherer

ProChain Press

Copyright 2011 by ProChain Solutions, Inc.

Direct inquiries to ProChain Solutions Inc., 3460 Commission Court #301, Lake Ridge, VA, 22192; or to publishing@prochain.com. ProChain Press is an imprint of ProChain Solutions, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publisher.

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication

(Provided by Quality Books, Inc.)

Scherer, Andreas, 1964

Be fast or be gone : racing the clock with critical chain project management / by Andreas Scherer.

p. cm.

LCCN 2010940389

ISBN 13: 978-1-934979-07-5 (hardcover)

ISBN 13: 978-1-934979-08-2 (ebook for devices such as Kindle)

ISBN 13: 978-1-934979-09-9 (ePub)

ISBN 13: 978-1-934979-10-4 (ePDF)

1. Brain--Cancer--Patients--Fiction. 2. Brain--Cancer--Fiction. 3. Drug development--Fiction.
4. Project management--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3619.C3495B4 2011 813.6

QBI10-600255

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are either the product of the authors imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, companies, events, or places is entirely coincidental.

Cover and interior stopwatch photo: iStockBibigon. Photo manipulation by RD Studio.

Book design by DesignForBooks.com

Printed in the United States of America

Preface

L ong before Henry Ford figured out how to make more cars in less time by using the assembly line, the business world wanted to be faster. Be fast and you get your product to customers sooner. Be fast and you have a winning edge over your competition. Be fast and you increase your bottom line.

Executives know that the demand for speed never stops. Like competitors in the 100-yard dash, we always want to shave just a little bit more off our best time, and then shave a little more off of that. Businesses want to be faster, because otherwise someone else will be there first. Yet most companies struggle to figure out how to do it. No matter what they do, projects seem to come in late, and everything takes just a little longer than expected.

Over the many years that we have been implementing Critical Chain solutions in Fortune 500 companies, we have helped them to substantially improve their on-time delivery performance. Companies that have correctly learned to use Critical Chain are typically on time with more than ninety-five percent of their projects. More than that, we have successfully accelerated those projects, cutting up to fifty percent off their historical project durations.

These numbers sound too good to be true. Theyre not. But its hard to believe in the Critical Chain approach until youve seen it at work. I spend a lot of time talking to executives about Critical Chain. I go over the mechanics and the underlying principles. I give people case studies. I have them do group exercises. I write blogs. But I found that no matter how much I talked about Critical Chain and no matter how well I did it, you cant really get it until youve seen it applied. I wrote this book because I wanted you to have the opportunity to see Critical Chain at work, in an imaginary company, the way that it has worked for our Fortune 500 customers and the way that it could work for you.

The story is fiction. There is no Mike Knight and there is no Altus Labs. But the details in their story are taken from my experiences implementing the Critical Chain in companies all over the world.

Above all, this story will introduce you to the three simple concepts at the heart of Critical Chain:

Sound project planning

Disciplined execution of key tasks

Focused work that lets your people get the job done

Be Fast or Be Gone shows you how these simple principles are applied on an individual project and throughout an organization. It shows you what happens when the principles arent in place, and it shows you how fast change can happen when they are. It shows you how you can leverage Critical Chain in your efforts to continuously get better and more competitive. It shows you the way to become a market leader.

Andreas Scherer

January, 2011

Lake Ridge, Virginia

Acknowledgments

R ob Newbold and Bill Lynch founded ProChain Solutions, a Critical Chain Project Management Company, in 1996. They created the relationships with major companies and drove the development of ProChains software and processes that have led to the companys long-standing record of success. They started ProChain Press. Without their hard work and entrepreneurial spirit, this book never could have been written. Without their extremely valuable advice during the various iterations of Be Fast or Be Gone, this would have been a much different book. I owe them many thanks.

I am also grateful to my other colleagues at ProChain for their continuous efforts to improve Critical Chain Project Management. In particular, Bill Fulton, Dr. Richard Moore, and Dr. Wendell Simpson were very supportive of this book and provided useful feedback.

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