Critical Chain is another of the well-known Goldratt business novels related to Theory of Constraints. This one is ToC applied to traditional project management. ToC-wise itself there isn't much news. The new thing is the application of critical chain thinking to project management. I found the new parts somewhat disappointing as it assumed that one person has a fixed amount of skill and didn't seem to be open for the possibility of cross-functional teams. That was kinda a big bummer on the book for me, even though the story was pretty good.
The mentor in the story is Rick Silver, who is a lecturer at a university on the eMBA program. One difference in structure of this business novel compared to many others is that the mentor is still figuring things out himself and he doesn't have all the answers. He wants to understand it all and discover something so that he can get tenure at the university. He gives a class on project management, and decides to focus on the real problems that people have. He discovers that projects have tasks that are sequenced and that each task is estimated with a buffer. The buffer is filled up (due to the scheduling) when it is estimated and thus adding a small buffer to every task will cause the total buffer to be small. Thus critical chain focuses on removing these small task buffers and put them at the end instead, to avoid the problem of many small buffers being eaten. Rick Silver helps his class in the eMBA through this thinking process and they try it out in their projects. Of course, it works and then... well I'll need to leave something for the reader still :)
Eli Goldratt is a good author, so the story is nice and easy to follow. It keeps the reader engaged and it is an excellent way to explain the concepts of ToC and critical chain planning. For story, I'd give it a 4 or 5 stars. However, I was uncomfortable with the content and some of the ideas. It doesn't really discuss breaking constraints a lot, especially not breaking skill constraints through learning and teaming. But instead, it accepts all the supposed constraints and calculates buffers around them. Also, it doesn't really talk a lot about changes or about the fact that the tasks planned might not be the reality. All of that, made critical chain planning an interesting idea, but didn't trigger any wow moments and left me with more questions. These project assumptions and missing topics caused me to dislike the book at times, and thus I'll leave it with 3 stars. Not really recommended unless you are in very traditional projects with true constraints or you are a Goldratt fan.
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Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2016
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Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2020
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Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2014
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Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2013
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Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2016
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Top reviews from other countries
Drew
Another great Goldratt book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 6, 2020Verified Purchase
Mr B
Interesting concept
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 8, 2020Verified Purchase
Mothership
Too much padding
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 17, 2013Verified Purchase
Chris
Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 1, 2016Verified Purchase
Manickavel A
Great resource on Critical Chain Project Management
Reviewed in India on October 2, 2018Verified Purchase
Great resource on Critical Chain Project Management
Reviewed in India on October 2, 2018
I am first time reading a book from this author. I loved the book. You get to learn a concept like Theory of Constraints or Critical Chain Project Management. But, you don't feel like it's boring content on a text book.Reviewed in India on October 2, 2018
I loved the story and how real life project management challenges are presented one at a time. You get absorbed into the story and travel along the project management challenges as they unravel.
A great book for any one who is involved in project management or production.
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