This is adapted from an article in PM Network , Project Management Institute, January 2000. Eliahu Goldratt s recent book, Critical Chain , is widely regarded as the most profound recent publication in project management. In this book, written as a novel, he applies theory of constraints to project management. The obvious constraint in projects, of course, is the critical path. Many managers have seized upon the radically different critical chain approach as an improved way of planning and managing projects.
Critical chain addresses several key problems in project scheduling.
However, the method ignores much of what we ve learned in decision analysis about understanding and modeling risk. Critical chain project management uses, primarily, deterministic calculations. This article compares and contrasts critical chain with a traditional decision analysis approach. Then, ways are described to blend the best features of the two styles. Simply put, greater throughput can be achieved by attacking the bottleneck constraint.