The period from 2009 to 2018 is Ching's most productive and influential decade — the era in which his major books were published, his consulting practice was established with significant clients, and his position as a leading translator of eliyahu-goldratt's TOC for software audiences was consolidated.
Major publications
This era encompasses Ching's four most significant books:
The four books move from narrative experiment to full novel to archival document to distilled reference — a progression that suggests Ching was both developing his ideas and finding the different formats appropriate for different audiences.
OddSocks Consulting
oddsocks-consulting was built and developed during this period, taking on clients including GE Energy, Dell, Royal London, Gazprom, and Standard Life Aberdeen. The consulting practice was the applied laboratory for the ideas appearing in the books: the focccus-formula, the constraint identification methodology in constraint-identification-in-knowledge-work, the software-project-rescue playbook. Work with these clients also included a lectureship at Victoria University School of Management in New Zealand, extending Ching's reach into academic management education.
The FOCCCUS Formula
The focccus-formula — Find, Optimize, Coordinate, Collaborate, Curate, Upgrade, Start again — emerged as Ching's signature distillation of TOC-for-software during this period. It appears in its most complete form in the-bottleneck-rules and was presented at tocico-affiliated events, including a TOCPA webinar in 2018. The formula represents the practitioner-facing crystallization of toc-for-software-development: a memorable, actionable sequence for software leaders facing delivery problems.
Conference presentations and TOC network
Ching keynoted lean-agile-scotland in both 2015 and 2018, with the lean-agile-scotland-keynote-2018 coming at the close of this era. These keynotes represented the highest-profile public presentations of his work within his home community. He also spoke at business-of-software-europe-2016 in Wicklow, Ireland, presenting to a software company founder and product-leader audience on using storytelling as a change management tool.
During this period Ching also built connections across the broader TOC community, visiting philip-marris at Marris Consulting in Paris (2015) to produce recorded conversations comparing TOC in manufacturing versus software — bridging the two branches of the Goldratt inheritance.
Becoming "The Bottleneck Guy"
The title of his 2018 book — the-bottleneck-rules — and the growing use of "The Bottleneck Guy" as a personal brand signal the beginning of the transition to the bottleneck-guy-brand-period. By 2018, Ching had established a clear, recognizable identity: the practitioner who teaches software teams to find and fix their bottlenecks, in plain language, through stories.