Critical Chain Project Management

This research project is on Critical Chain Project Management. The focus will be on upper management and project managers for businesses. Critical chain project management (CCPM) is a relatively recent development in project management practice that is intended to improve efficiency by ensuring that sufficient resources are devoted to critical sub-projects or processes. The critical chain consists of the sub-project or processes that must be completed for the project.

Paper Masters provides term papers on Critical Chain Project Management

This is a topic suggestion for a research paper on Critical Chain Project Management. We suggest that you discuss at least two issues that you see as compelling from the perspective of upper management and project managers.

1. Find 4 primary web-accessible sources
2. Research on the Critical Chain Project Management finding some issues within the Critical Chain Project Management
3. Decide which two or three issues are the most interesting or compelling on the Critical Chain Project Management
4. Write on those issues using the sections detailed below

Depending on the nature of the project, the critical chain sub-projects can be in series where each sub-project must be completed before another component can begin. It can also be a number of sub-projects that occur in parallel, with the final step of the project involving the linking of the sub-projects. CCPM is based on the theory of constraints, which argues that a system such as a project has inherent bottlenecks that must be carefully managed to maximize efficiency. It recommends building buffers into the scheduling and resource allocation to deal with the anticipated and unanticipated bottlenecks.

What is a Project Management issue?

A Project Management Issue is some problem, trend, concern that has the project management community concerned. Your two issues can be different or related.

1. Introduction -- short description of the Critical Chain Project Management and the issues within that Critical Chain Project Management

   a. The most notable of these stakeholders are upper management, project managers, and end users. They will be impacted more from CCPM than the end users or customers and will need to have a more thorough understanding of the underlying concepts.

2. Issue 1 -- details on:

   a. what the issue is

   b. how the issue affects project success/failure

   c. who is involved with the issue

   d. when does the project management issue occur

   e. where the issue happens

3. Alternatives for dealing with issue 1 (at least 2)

   a. Two basic alternatives are:

   i. Do nothing (ignore)

   ii. Do something (make changes)

   A. Do something should have several options, pick a couple.

4. Suggested solution for issue 1 (which alternative do you like most and why?)
5. Issue 2 (same breakdown as Issue 1)
6. Alternatives for dealing with issue 2 (at least 2)
7. Suggested solution for issue 2
8. Conclusion

Critical Chain Project Management is intended to provide project managers with a greater degree of flexibility for project planning and interventions in the event of variance. The issue of the type of support interventions that managers should make for projects can be resolved by using a milestone variance approach. The senior manager becomes more directly involved with project management when there is a substantial variance at a milestone. The issue of estimating the duration of tasks for scheduling can be resolved by developing a detailed estimate of each component of the task. This type of approach allows each task or sub-project to have a variable buffer that is based on the risk of delay and the impact on the project as a whole if the scheduled completion date is not met.