I have frequently been asked – how would you actually implement Critical Chain project management? But before I get to that, why would you want to implement critical chain? If you work in an organization that follows traditional project management practices, it is likely that critical chain project management may appeal to your PMO. You […]
Portfolio management using Kanban and Critical Chain
if you have been following my blog or have been at my presentations over the last few months, you know that I see the application Theory of Constraint concepts as critical to helping the organization achieve its stated goals. A number of folks are of the opinion that one does not need Critical Chain project management at all – adoption of Kanban is enough. I differ.
Agile project management using Kanban and Theory of Constraints
I recently presented “Agile Project Management using Kanban & Theory of Constraints” at the PMI-NB lunch-and-learn and at Project World Business Analyst World Atlantic Canada. Since I got a lot of requests for the presentation, I figured this would be an easier way to distribute it to everyone. Feel free to write to me with comments, questions or clarifications.
Combining Critical Chain and Kanban to improve capacity
It has been close to two years since I embarked on the path of using Kanban within our software engineering teams and a year since I first piloted critical chain project management. Both concepts have benefited my projects. Why adopt the two simultaneously? They address two different needs: one looks into the future to determine if the project will be on time and within budget while the other highlights bottlenecks as they arise.
Forget project post-mortems, predict project failure
Critical chain strongly recommends the use of buffers. It is the right thing to do. But just as local optimization does not necessarily lead to global optimization, adding safety to every task does not mean the project will be protected, which was the objective of adding buffers to being with. So how does this buffer management work?
Speed up project delivery using Critical Chain
Critical Chain is an application of Theory of Constraints (ToC) first proposed by Eli Goldratt. The premise of ToC is that just as a strength of a chain is determined by its weakest link, the throughput of any system is determined by its constraint or the bottleneck. In any system, there will be just one or two constraint/s that determines throughput.
If we consider a project as a set of dependent events; a.k.a. a chain, then the critical path is the project constraint. The length of the critical path dictates when the project can be completed. Any task that is late on a critical path makes the project late. However, the critical path assumes resources are available 100% of the time. This is an incorrect assumption especially if you are working in a matrix organizational structure. The resource you need might only be available 50% of the time. Your project schedule should reflect this.