An analysis of Critical Chain concepts in the context of their possible application to traditional project management

Critical Chain Project Management is a relatively new, popular project management paradigm. Due to its radically different approach of addressing common project management problems, there is a strong interest in researching its utility. Much of the debate is focused on determining or refuting the superiority of the specific paradigm presented by Goldratt in his 1997 novel ‘Critical Chain’. In contrast, it is the objective of this paper to highlight the potential benefits of analysing and incorporating the underlying insights and ideas of Critical Chain Project Management into more traditional project management contexts. Five principle constituent concepts are identified that appear to be of general use in project management: (1) the consideration of resource constraints in determining activity criticality, (2) the aggregation of contingency time at an activity chain’s end, (3) the explicit accounting for uncertain activity durations, (4) the monitoring of contingency time buffers for project control and (5) the timely alerting of project resources.