Book Review: Critical Chain by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt – Episode 102

As delivery of projects and programs are the foundation for executing an organization’s strategy, an organization can achieve excellence by improving its project delivery capability. This podcast episode provides a brief overview of the book called “Critical Chain” by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt. It’s one of the popular books in project management circles.

In this podcast we will review a book on PM. The book is called Critical Chain and is authored by DR Eliyahu Goldratt. Although the book came out a few years ago but due to the non-conventional way in which it approached a number of PM topics, it continues to be quite popular today. As the name of the book implies, the book focuses on the topic of critical chain in PM, which is a concept that Dr Goldratt introduces in the book. This is different from the concept of critical path that we as PMs know from our work in PM. In addition to the new concepts that Dr Goldratt introduces in the book, the non-conventional style of the book, which is written as a story novel has also added to its popularity. We will cover those aspects in this review as well.

First a bit of information about the author and his related publications. This book is authored by Dr. Eliyahu Goldratt who is the author of multiple popular books. One of his books “The Goal” became quite popular and its concepts continue to be in use by management professionals in operations and marketing. In “the Goal”, the author based his work on the Theory of Constraints, which has to do with viewing the strength of the system based on its constraints. This is based on the idea that the strength of a link is as strong as its “weakest link”. So, to make the system stronger, the organization must work to remove its constraints to achieve its goals. In the book “The Goal”, the author shows how to optimize the system by systematically removing the constraints through formal steps and thinking processes.

After the popularity of the book “The Goal”, Dr Goldratt applied the same principles of the Theory of Constraints to Project Management and discussed the concept in this book on “Critical Chain”. The idea is to view the critical chain of the project, which highlights a project’s constraints and to manage the project by mitigating the effect of those constraints and also removing the constraints. In many studies since the book was published, CCPM has been credited to improve project delivery performance especially when it comes to improving project duration, budget, and meeting of scope.

Now let’s briefly review the concept of critical chain as it is introduced and discussed as an alternative to critical path analysis.

As we know from PM, a critical path is that specific sequence of project activities that add up to the longest duration. The multiple sequences in a project chart are constructed by taking into account the pre-reqs and dependencies. So, once that’s done, the critical path is that sequence, which results in the longest duration.

This book on the other hand introduces the topic of CCPM, which as was mentioned earlier is based on the TOC. The Critical Chain is defined as the longest chain [not path] of dependent tasks. The chain in this case is not the same as the path. The chain instead takes into account additional dependencies related to resources, resource constraints, and so on.

By taking this view the author introduces a number of practices. These include introducing safety buffers at strategic points in the project flow, constantly monitoring the health of the critical chain, monitoring tasks on their remaining duration and not their percentage complete, and other such practices. Over the years, organizations have found these practices to be effective to deliver projects on time and within budget.

The book introduces this concept of critical chain by narrating a story like in a novel. The story includes a number of characters from a university. For example, there is a professor who is aspiring to get tenure in the university but then finds him struggling to keep his job in the university because of the falling interest and enrollment in the executive MBA programs nationwide. Yet his engaging teaching style and specific work in a Project Management class earns him accolades in the institution where he teaches and also amongst his students.

Throughout the story that mostly takes place in a PM class, the book highlights the frustrations that typical PMs and their management feel when attempting to deliver projects within the committed timeframes and costs. This leads to a discussion among the characters on the challenges with estimation techniques, managing vendors, managing seniors in the organization, and some other useful topics. The characters debate a number of PM concepts and discuss their feasibility and limitations. Some of the topics that characters discuss include critical path tasks vs non-critical path tasks, and late start and early start. The characters also discuss estimation errors and the drivers behind those errors, and building safety buffers at strategic places instead of adding them in each task. In one setting there was also an extensive dialog related to managing vendors and about negotiating with them on trade-offs between pricing and delivery timeframes.

Now a few other things about the book. First, as I had discussed earlier the book has been very popular and it’s concepts have been discussed and adopted in many organizations. However, you should note that the book doesn’t offer any comprehensive PM methodology rather a few concepts on how to improve project delivery performance. Also, due to the novel like a style of the book in which the author attempts to get a few key concepts across to the reader, you may need to read (or listen) this book a couple of times to understand some of the concepts. But overall, it’s a good read. It’s also available as an audiobook.

With this we come to the conclusion of the review of this book. Look forward to more such reviews at CIOtechCentral.com.

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