CRITICAL CHAIN PROJECT MANAGEMENT or CCPM is a management strategy devised to ensure timely completion of a multi-step project, by focussing on the critical task and planning all other steps with an equal probability of delay or early completion.

RATIONALE OF CRITICAL CHAIN PROJECT MANAGEMENT

The rationale behind critical chain project management is that if more time is assigned to each task in order to take care of possible delays from exigencies, then even if the exigencies do not exist, the team working on it will generally use the whole time at its disposal. In such a situation, the completion of project gets automatically delayed. Further, if the most important time consuming task is delayed further, even the scheduled completion is not attainable. This, in terms of CCPM philosophy, is the primary reason of delays in project completion.

To counter this challenge, the CCPM philosophy comes out with a unique answer that lies at the core of all CCPM strategies. It suggests managing projects in a manner where the various tasks, which are part of the project, are scheduled with an expectation that delay in some of them will be compensated by early completion of other processes. The buffer periods are thereby considerably reduced for the whole project and kept at the end of the critical chain process, thereby creating a sense of urgency in each and every task. It also creates an incentive for completing processes before time, to take care of delays elsewhere.

HISTORY & ORIGIN OF CCPM

Developed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt, who introduced it in his book, 'Critical Chain' in 1997, CCPM derives heavily from the methods and algorithms used by him in his earlier book, 'The goal', published in 1984, which introduced the 'theory of constraints.'

CCPM vs. TRADITIONAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Various studies have indicated that CCPM significantly reduces project delay, and if properly implemented it leads to 'in-time, within budget' completion of projects in 95% cases. This reflects marked improvement over the traditional project management, wherein delays are observed in over 50 % projects, and the final budget consumption is more than double of original allocation.

One of the main reasons of delay in the traditional project management is that buffers are given for each and every process, thereby removing any urgency in their expedient completion. Another problem often seen with them is that often there is multi-tasking, with same team trying to execute

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