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Projects inherently involve all kinds of uncertainty. They lack accurate information. And they’re full of wrong thinking. Getting those realities understood up front, and learning how to best cope with them, is at the heart of the project management methodology called “critical chain.” Here, leading practitioners of the technique share their insights from the field.
Simply stated, the methodology known as Critical Chain attempts to plan and manage projects using a paradigm shift: Instead of building safety time into each task, make accurate estimates consisting only of work content and establish a “safety buffer” at the project level where extra hours are built in. When a project starts burning up buffer, it is easier to spot the risks and remedy them before it’s too late to get a project back on track.
Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt, a physicist turned management advisor, is the father of the Theory of Constraints, a body of knowledge on the effective management of organizations as systems. When he presented the concept of critical chain project management (CCPM) at a conference in Jerusalem in 1990, it was hailed as the first true breakthrough in project management in decades. His seminal book Critical Chain (North River Press; 1997) led to the development of software programs that enabled project managers to implement his strategy in the real world.
There are two major ideas involved in CCPM: Understanding the nature of variation in process uncertainty, and providing accurate priority information to a project team, says Mark Woeppel, president of Pinnacle Strategies, a critical chain implementer and educator, and author of Projects In Less Time (Pinnacle Strategies; 2006).
“At the root of project failure is a lack of accurate priority information,” Woeppel says.
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