57086 Contract and Project Management23David Sowden, The University of Hull

2357086 Contract and Project Management

Goldratt’s Critical Chain

David Sowden, The University of Hull

History - Goldratt’s Critical ChainCritical Chain Project Management (CCPM) is a methodology for planning, executing and managing projects in single and multi-project environments, that puts the main emphasis on the resources required to execute project tasks.

Critical Chain Project Management was developed by Dr Eli Goldratt and was first introduced to the market in his Theory of Constraints book “Critical Chain’ in 1997.

It was developed in response to many projects being dogged by poor performance manifested in longer than expected durations, frequently missed deadlines, increased costs in excess of budget, and substantially less deliverables than originally promised.

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Goldratt. E.M. (1997), Critical Chain. United Kingdom: Avebury. ISBN-10: 0566080389

History - Goldratt’s Critical Chain

This is in contrast to the more traditional CPM and PERT methods, which emphasise task order and rigid scheduling.

A Critical Chain project network will tend to keep the resources levelly loaded, but will require them to be flexible in their start times and to quickly switch between tasks and task chains to keep the whole project on schedule.

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• Project failure - some causes– Not starting the task until the last moment

• (Student Syndrome)– Delaying (or pacing) completion of the task

• (Parkinson’s Law)– Cherry picking tasks– Management forces

ProblemsTHE BASICS

Addresses these issues in the following ways:

PlanningCritical Chain - longest chain (not Path) of dependent tasks

Estimations - recommends that task estimates are cut to half the length of a “normal” duration

Safety - ‘Buffers’ manage the impact of variation and uncertainty

Project BufferFeeding Buffer

Resources Buffer

Critical Chain Project Management (1)THE BASICS

Execution

Priorities - all project resources are given clear and aligned priorities relating to the ’health’ of the chain, and related to its associated buffer

Completion - ‘Roadrunner’ approach - when there is work available it should be progressed at the fastest possible speed (with compromising quality) until completed

Review

Buffer Management - amount of each buffer consumed indicates how the delay could effect project completion

Remaining Duration - tasks are monitored on their remaining duration, not their percentage complete.

Critical Chain Project Management (2)THE BASICS

TASK

Research the Critical Chain Project Management method