Management Improves Project Performance By

Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) provides a substantial step in ongoing improvement to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). The critical chain differs from the critical path by: a) Including resource dependencies, and b) Never changing. CCPM improves the project plan by ensuring that it is feasible and immune from reasonable common cause variation (uncertainty, or statistical fluctuations). It does this by aggregating uncertainty into buffers at the end of activity paths. The Project Buffer protects the overall project completion on the critical chain path, and Feeding Buffers protect the critical chain from path merging. Buffer Management enhances measurement and decision making for project control. CCPM implements required changes in resource behaviors, including elimination of date-driven activity performance and multitasking. Most of all, CCPM improves the focus of the Project Manager and performers. Projects that use CCPM have a greatly improved record of schedule, cost, and scope performance. CCPM projects are normally complete in less than one half of the time of projects using previous planning and control methods