By dr. Efrat Goldratt - Ashlag - Rgrupé - 2025

INTRODUCTION
“Goldratt's Rules of Flow,” by author Efrat Goldratt-Ashlag, is the best seller for project management, whose official Italian translation was edited by the Real Throughput team - Gianluca Davico, Sara Faletto, and Emanuele Strada.
The work synthesizes the most advanced studies in project management to package a solution that supports the individuals in the company who are called to the front line, among a thousand tightrope walkers, in extinguishing the constant fires that are ignited daily in multi-project environments.
What are the silent killers that cause delays in most projects? For many, it comes naturally to think of uncertainty and variability as the primary causes of delays and difficulties in meeting commitments: budgets, specifications, due dates.
Variability and uncertainty are inherent characteristics of any project. Projects are typically characterized by the uniqueness of the outcome, the non-repetitiveness of the intellectual and other activities required to execute them, a time horizon that is usually longer than routine production cycles, and require substantial conceptualization and design efforts.
Variability and uncertainty are inherent characteristics of every project: the uniqueness of the outcome to be pursued, the non-repetitiveness of the activities to be performed, and time horizons typically longer than the production cycles typical of repetitive operations are aspects common to all projects that require not inconsiderable conceptualization and design efforts. The reliance on experience and routines to accurately estimate commitments and the amount of time required to execute tasks is consequently limited, with inevitable repercussions for the effectiveness of synchronization between the various “project branches” and overall scheduling.
Given the situation described above, to protect against uncertainty and variability, it should be sufficient to use appropriately sized and positioned “time buffers” to protect the project from unforeseen events.
The concept of time buffers and their proper management (Buffer Management) is the cornerstone on which the first solution developed by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt, called Critical Chain Project Management (abbreviated as CCPM), was developed and disseminated to the world through the business novel entitled “Critical Chain” published in 1997.
The Critical Chain approach represented a substantial step forward from traditional methodologies: it recognized the presence of a constraint in the project, i.e., the Critical Chain, not to be confused with the Critical Path used in the PERT methodology; it introduced the need to manage a single project buffer instead of protecting each activity; and it set new rules for progress control called Buffer Management.
If the leading cause of delays plaguing projects were only uncertainty and variability, the solution should have solved the root of the problem. The improvements over traditional methods were significant, but there was still something that did not fully satisfy Goldratt.
As the spread and implementation of CCPM increased, Goldratt soon realized that buffers were being wasted more often than not. And not because of uncertainty: there was something else going on. The Critical Chain solution, by better managing uncertainty, allowed him to isolate the other factors that caused project delays.
Several times, Goldratt was asked to publish his findings on the subject, but each time he replied that it was only a matter of time, as he was currently busy writing his last book, The Choice, with his daughter, Efrat. But in the end, with his untimely death on June 11, 2011, time was precisely what he came to miss.

KEY LEARNINGS
What are these other silent killers that cause us to waste the buffers diligently put into our projects and create major impediments in the project flow? Goldratt's Flow Rules will help you identify and manage individual flow obstacles to achieve a streamlined flow of projects. Dosage, Triage, Full Kitting, and the control of WIP- these are just some of the techniques you will discover by reading Goldratt's Flow Rules.

TRAMA
Reading Goldratt's “Rules of Flow” will immerse you in a multi-project environment, described with vivid accuracy and realism. It all begins when Isaac Wilson, founder and owner of Wilson Technology Solutions, receives an email from Doolen, a longtime client, threatening to cancel his entire project portfolio due to yet another delay in meeting the agreed-upon delivery schedule.
Working within the family business is Marc, Isaac's second son, who heads the company's engineering department. Taking note of the increasing difficulties in competing in an increasingly aggressive market, Isaac tells his son that he intends to issue an exploratory mandate to sell the company, and the world seems to be collapsing on him. Because of this, Marc decides to reclaim the space he had always sacrificed to the family business's priorities and think a little for himself: he enrolls in the Executive MBA program. Here, in the advanced Project Management course, he will have as a lecturer an old acquaintance in the world of Theory of Constraints: Professor Richard Silver, whom Critical Chain readers will have already met. In the meantime, Professor Silver's course, initially focused on the Critical Chain, has evolved significantly, delving into all the obstacles that threaten the flow of projects.