Implementing critical chain to improve product development performance

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design & Management Program, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 81).Project management is a crucial aspect of product development. There is a need for better project management tools to help product development teams meet their schedule, budget, and technical requirements more accurately with the given uncertainty of each product development project. This thesis is a case study of a Critical Chain implementation. The implementation included the creation of project networks and Critical Chain schedules for each development project studied in this thesis. Once the schedules were in place, the teams developed the products following Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM). The theory behind CCPM has merit but the culture change necessary to achieve a competitive was found challenging in practice. In this thesis, the author studied CCPM from two perspectives: project management and resource management. The team demonstrated both perspectives to an extent, but four months was not enough time. CCPM appeared to improve performance of each project, but the resource management goals of the thesis were not as successful.James E. Weisheit.S.M