What is Critical Chain Project Management?
- The first really new way to manage projects in forty years.
- A better way to achieve project success: scope, cost, and schedule.
- A way to reduce project duration by one half or more.
- Reduced stress for project teams and managers.
Why?
International project success rates are very poor. Up to one third of projects are canceled before they complete. Of the remainder, less than one third achieve all three necessary conditions: scope, cost, and schedule. This is true across all kinds of projects, and across all cultures.
Most of the project literature suggests the causes of such project failure are failures to implement one or more aspects of the existing project system; perhaps best described in the Project Management Institute's Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). Unfortunately, many of the largest project failures make very good use of this system.
Eli Goldratt was unconstrained by conventional thinking when he looked a project failures from the viewpoint of the Theory of Constraints. His conclusion? Most project failure and frustration stems from improper management of uncertainty. Many project managers claim to know all about uncertainty, and they use methods such as PERT or Monte-Carlo analysis to assess uncertainty. But this does not lead to effective management of uncertainty, starting with the planning process. Look at a little experiment to get an idea of the magnitude of uncertainty in even very simple task estimates.
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