45December 2005Vol. 17 No. 4Engineering Management Journal Critical Chain: A New Project Management Paradigm or Old Wine in New Bottles?

Ever since Goldratt introduced critical chain (CC) in his book of the same name in 1997, the concept has been widely discussed in the project management literature and project management community. Some authors see CC as the most important breakthrough for project management since the introduction of the critical path method and refer to CC as the direction for project management in the 21st century (Steyn, 2002; Newbold, 1998). Others question its innovativeness and argue that it consists of known concepts presented in a differen