Critical Chain Case Study

The Critical Chain is the longest chain of dependent tasks. Critical Chain Management is a method of managing projects that cuts the time each task should take in half and uses buffers to give a safety net for on time product completion. Critical Chain Management attempts to solve the ever present issue that projects face. This issue is the inability to meet deadlines. Even when there are large amounts of safety embedded in to the project and even into each task, it is inevitable that the project will run over its time constraints. When a project does not meet deadlines there are usually consequences. These consequences can include going over budget, angry customers, delay in payment and a bad reputation. All of these can be damaging to a company.
Inability to meet deadlines is a very real problem. There have been attempts to correct this issue but they have failed. A few of these attempts are the use critical path and generous safety nets to attempt to give the project enough time, even with unforeseen problems, to be completed by the deadline. Unfortunately, it does not work because human nature is to delay till last minute. Many have the motto, “Why do today, what can be done tomorrow.” This kind of attitude is what is detrimental to on time project completion. Critical Chain Management attempts to eliminate these human behaviors by creating buffers instead of embedding the safety time into each task, there is one big safety net at the end of a project, alongside of the critical chain and on the paths that lead into the critical change. Once again these buffers are separate from tasks, so they are not as easily noticed. This is kind of a way to “trick” the mind into seeing that this particular task is to be completed by a...

... middle of paper ...

...contributed to the project being completed late, because the buffer time would have covered it. In the electrical industry, the same effect would be felt. The employees would work hard to meet the shorter deadline and if a problem arises there is still a safety net to keep from missing deadlines.
The Critical Chain Method can do what it says it will do. If employees take an aggressive approach in all stages of the project the Critical Chain method will definitely work. The problem is who can predict whether employees will work to their full potential if they know that there is a safety net that the buffers provide. The key to the Critical Chain Method is that all parties involved in the project should not know that a buffer exists. Only a few key people should be aware. If there is minimal knowledge of the safety added in then this method could work very well.