Critical Chain (novel)
First edition cover
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| Author | Eliyahu Goldratt |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Project Management |
| Genre | Business Novel |
| Publisher | North River Press |
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Publication date
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4 September 1997 |
| Media type | Print (paperback) |
| Pages | 246 pp (first edition, paperback) |
| ISBN | (first edition, paperback) |
| OCLC | 36781362 |
Critical Chain is a novel by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt using the Critical Chain theory of Project Management as the major theme. It is really a teaching method for the theory.
Like Goldratt’s book The Goal, Critical Chain is written as a novel, not like a project manager's how-to guide. This book is a story about a professor trying to attain his tenure at a university's business school. The plot is used to maintain interest in the subject and provide a real life feel to the book. It provides plenty of real-world examples. The plot of the novel is fourfold:
The goal of the book is the last point, but Goldratt makes it clear that educational systems must change to better accommodate the quickly changing world of business.
The book walks the reader through a series of steps to establish the principles for the discussion. It is written for someone with a modicum of project management background.
The book starts by pointing out the problems with how time estimates are normally done on projects. It then provides a primer on the Theory of Constraints and an example of its implementation in a steel mill. With the foundation set, it proceeds to show how the Theory of Constraints can be applied to schedule generation, resources constraints and multiple projects.
Goldratt claims that the current method of generating task time estimates is the primary reason for increased expense of projects and their inability to finish on time. The commonly accepted principle is to add safety (aka: pad or slop) to generate a task time length that will essentially guarantee the step gets completed. He asserts that estimates for a task are based on individuals providing values that they feel will give them an 80-90% chance of completing the step, these estimates are further padded by managers above this person creating a length of time to complete a task that is excessive - as much as 200% of the actual time required. It is this excessive padding that has the opposite effect - guaranteeing the task will run full term or late. As counter intuitive as this seems, he provides examples of why this is the case. This predisposes the people on the project to consume the time estimate by:
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