Critical Chain

Book excerpt: This fast-paced business novel does for project management what The Goal and It's Not Luck have done for production and marketing. Goldratts novels have traditionally slain sacred cows and delivered new ways of looking at processes which seem like common sense once you read them. Critical Chain is no exception. In perhaps Elis most readable book yet, two of the established principles of project management, the engineering estimate and project milestones, are found wanting and dismissed, and other established principles are up for scrutiny - as Goldratt once more applies his Theory of Constraints. The approach is radical, yet clear, understandable and logical. New techniques are introduced, and Project Buffers, Feeding Buffers, Limit Multitasking, Improved Communications and Correct Measurements make them work. Goldratt even handles the complicated statistics of dispersed variability versus accumulated variability so deftly you wont even be aware of learning about them - theyll just seem like more common sense! Critical Chain is critical reading for anyone who deals with projects. If you use block diagrams, drawings or charts to keep track of your activities, you are managing a project - and this book is for you.