Critical Chain

Goldratt effectively picks a university's executive MBA program as a backdrop to teach about critical chain. The story lines are less interesting than what you find in "The Goal", but the application of TOC (theory of constraints) in a project environment is very well explained. The class room setting of most of the book is very useful in allowing the students to voice their objections, and for the main character to address where and how to change their thinking, and shed a different light on their experiences. There are also some interesting exploits into the business world, where the main character becomes a consultant, and demonstrates how to apply the theory in the real world. This book makes you reconsider how to manage the critical path of a project, by using feeding buffers, and how to actually shorten timelines by removing milestones and managing activities and resources by focusing on completing the project, not the individual tasks.

The style of this book (a business novel) was great for someone like me who is a civil engineering student and new to project management. I'm eager to implement it and I like the new way of thinking it offers which might be the hardest part about implementing it.

Bought on the recommendation of a prof. Overall, the book did a fair job of teaching critical chain principles without the textbook boredom. Comparing the book to Goldratt's 'The Goal', it could have had some more detailed examples and results. I personally didn't like the 'you can save your marriage if you can earn enough money' romantic side theme. I bought the book to learn, and the book effectively taught.

This is a wondeful business novel. We are repeating some of the benefits from this novel in our company.

This is the most important advance and addition to the fundamentals of project management since Imhotep planned and built the first step pyramid. It clearly shows the fallacies inherehent in current project management techniques including an over reliance on the critical path methodologies. This is a must read for project managers that must meet schedules on a regular basis. It truly does work and the basis of statistical techniques are appropriate for all but the simplest projects.