Pomodoro Technique Illustrated

Drum-Buffer-Rope

The average number of Pomodori that you complete per day is your drum rhythm. The sum of all the estimates that you have on your Activity Inventory sheet is your buffer. The rope is how the constraint signals to the upstream process when to slow down or speed up the pace.

The rope starts in your hand and ends in the buffer. With it, you can pull new activities to your workbench. When the buffer is filled, the rope becomes slacker. When the buffer is empty, the rope is stretched to its maximum. You pull, but there are no new activities.

You need to avoid both feast and famine syndromes. The feast syndrome occurs when you have too ...