What Is Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) – Detailed Guide

Rohit Rajpal

Senior Writer

Critical Chain Project Management

For all kinds of teams that are required to deliver successful projects regularly, along with optimizing the available resources, critical chain project management is their ultimate support. 

For instance, let’s assume that you are a little child using blocks to build something. Although you only have a limited set of bricks, almost everything is possible to construct. 

As you proceed further, you will draw resources from the inventory of accessible blocks. But what if all of your possibilities have already been explored? How do you know that the building pieces you have will let you construct what you want? 

This is where the concept of critical chain project management comes into play. 

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What is Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM)?

It was Eliyahu M. Goldratt who had initially created the critical chain method as part of his Theory of Constraints (TOC). Using the concept of constraints, you can easily identify the primary bottlenecks or limiting aspects hindering the proper execution of your project. 

This one-of-a-kind Goldratt’s critical chain method had stepped foot in the market in the late 1990s and was absorbed by leading brands, including NASA, Texas Instruments, etc., in no time. 

It is a unique technique for managing project timelines that take into account important resource limitations, such as whether the workers contracted for the project are available to finish the job. Doesn’t it seem easy? 

If your team wishes to monitor the usage of various resources efficiently, then critical chain method project management is what they seek.

Types of Critical Chain Project Management

Including a buffer in a plan is a fancy way of indicating that you include additional time in case tasks demand longer than your expectations. This might be crucial in agile projects if you need to learn how to tackle the problem you’re attempting to solve, and specific needs only become clear during development.

The CCPM project management accepts that you should always strive to consider contingencies when calculating how long project activities will take. The main thing to remember is that you are human, and humans are pretty bad regarding estimations. To stay within budget, it is therefore essential to establish time buffers after crucial project activities.

CCPM offers three types of buffers – project, feeding, and resource buffers. Let’s learn more about them in detail!

Types of Buffer in Critical Chain Project Management

1. Project Buffer

Consider the project buffer to be extra time added at the end of the previous project activity to account for any possible delays. This might be the “deadline” for finishing the job. Instead of dividing and spreading out this contingency, treat it as a single block of time and put it on hold after the engagement.

2. Feeding Buffer

Feeding buffers are contingencies that are introduced at the end of a series of non-critical project activities (i.e., the non-critical chain). By using a feeding buffer, delays won’t affect the critical chain.

A relevant example of this type of buffer is adding a cushion to account for the holiday season when production slows down and project team members take vacations. This buffer helps deal with anything the project team still needs to finish by the holidays before the new year.

3. Resource Buffer

A third type of buffer is a resource buffer, which can emerge as the form of extra people or materials maintained on hand to assist any action along the critical chain. This virtual work is the first in the important task chain that needs critical resources. 

Having this type of buffer by your side ensures that even if a task finishes earlier than the expected deadline, people are there to help you get started early on to the next phase of work.

The Components Of A Critical Chain

The critical chain has three main components – critical path, feeding chain, and resource buffers. 

1. Critical Path

The critical path is the lengthiest set of interconnected tasks that are mainly required for a project’s successful completion. This component basically lists every activity essential to the project’s success in such an order that it must be completed on time. 

Regarding the critical path, it’s essential to understand that it has various levels of dependencies. A task is moved to another path, commonly called the feeding chain, if it has no impact on the critical path. The most crucial dependencies or project-essential operations mainly make up the critical path.

2. Feeding Chain

A supporting series of actions known as the feeding chain must come after the critical path, which is connected to every feeding chain at the end. This is so because just one of the crucial path activities is impacted by the feeding chain events. The feeding chain must run simultaneously with the critical path in order to prevent any kinds of delays within the critical path.

Let’s grab a gist of this concept by taking into consideration the critical path and the feeding chain in an example. Take the example of planning a company party, and your critical path looks like this:

  • Pick a theme
  • Share party invites
  • Select a venue
  • Host an event

Though all the steps mentioned above are steps to the critical path, there must be some feeding chain tasks completed while the critical path is in use. Just for instance, the group must create an invitation and make a decision on who to invite to a party before sending out specific invitations.

Before the event, they must also prepare the venue and buy decorations that fit the theme. These are all illustrations of tasks that mainly come under this component of critical chain method project management.

3. Resource Buffers

The critical chain’s resources mainly include buffers as safety nets to guarantee a project’s success. These buffers, which resemble bumpers on a bowling alley, are meant to give projects more wiggle room in case something does not go as planned.

The Critical Chain Method vs. The Critical Path Method

Despite having a theoretically similar sounding name, the critical chain and critical path methods are very different.

Critical Path

The critical path method mainly concentrates on one group of concurrent tasks that must be finished in order for a project to be fully finished. Even if other tasks still need to be finished, the critical path lists all of the tasks that are absolutely essential for the project’s full completion.

Teams can use this project management techniques to choose the ideal workflow to implement when curating a project timeline. A task is given a lower priority if it is off the critical path. Whether or not certain critical tasks are finished by a certain deadline determines the project’s success.

Critical Chain

The critical chain method also emphasizes task dependencies, which also consider project resources. Given that there is a wide range of variables unknown and may result in resource limits, the critical chain technique builds resource buffers—a surplus of resources to serve as a barrier when it comes down to the project schedule.

Unlike the critical path methodology, which only takes into account whether tasks are completed, the critical chain approach measures project success by how quickly resource buffers are being used. If your team has yet to use any resource buffers, your project is on schedule.

Steps For Using The Critical Chain Project Management Process 

Fortunately, the CCPM project management technique is simple to implement. Let’s take a look at the steps required. 

Critical Chain Project Management Process Steps

Step 1: Identify The Critical Path

Prior to beginning, you must decide which tasks are most crucial and which ones would take the longest to finish. Your critical path will consist of all these tasks. Make sure to start your project with the most important activities first, then work your way down for a successful CCPM process.

Step 2: Determine The Number Of Resources Required By Your Project

When used in this context, the term “resources” can refer to the time spent by your team members, the actual materials and tools used to produce the finished product, or the workers who will actually carry out the task.

Estimate the number of resources you’ll mainly require to finish this project. Determine the number of workers who are required to execute a specific task on the critical path and how long it will take them. Do this for every task written out on the critical chain.

Due to the fact that resources are the main emphasis of critical chain project management, any potential limitations should be taken into account when assigning tasks to workers. For instance, Tom may have been given 10 days to create your new website, but he will be away for 7 of those 10 days. 

Here, there is a resource constraint. You want Steve to work on the design while Tom is gone to keep the project on schedule. This is how you can prevent extensive delays or downtime by early detection of resource constraints.

Step 3: Place Your Buffers

Things start to get interesting at this point! By calculating buffers, you can easily add contingencies to your projects when using Goldratt’s critical chain method.

After determining the required resources for the critical path and feeding chains, it becomes a mere cake of a piece to decide where to install buffers and how much time/resources your buffers should primarily include. 

This enables you to compute the buffers you should construct based on the requirements you determined while constructing the critical path. A project manager in charge of buffer management can also assist you in keeping resources available and preventing any kinds of bottlenecks

Step 4: Eliminate Multitasking

Troubled girl due to multiple tasks in handWhen workers switch between tasks, task durations increase, and productivity decreases. Finally, as your team members work to keep the project on track, team morale begins to dwindle.

Because the critical chain project management methodology allows employees to focus on fewer tasks at once, teams can complete projects faster. Making sure that your staff has just the right amount of work to keep them focused but not so much that they are forced to multitask is crucial.

Top Tips For Effective Critical Chain Project Management

Adopting CCPM allows organizations to complete projects faster. By focusing on the resources needed to complete a project, project managers create a simple and easy-to-manage process.

With the help of critical chain project management, a team can see the entire project lifecycle. Most importantly, it enables them to understand how their actions contribute to the project. Below mentioned are some of the most effective tips for successful critical chain project management. Let’s explore!

Tips For Critical Chain Project Management

Tips 1: Create 50/50 Time Estimates

Successful critical chain processes tend to reduce project timeline estimates by 50%. The goal is not to overwhelm your team members but to avoid wasting time and encourage them to work on a more effective timeline. (Keep in mind that if the reduced time estimate is incorrect, you’ll have buffers in place.)

Employees sometimes put off starting tasks until the last minute or even extend them to compensate for the lost time. You can instill a sense of urgency in your team by cutting the time it takes to complete a task in half. This routine will push them to maintain concentration and finish their work on time.

Tips 2: Curate A Dedicated Project Model

If you have got your hands on the CCPM project management methodology, then your project must be a complicated one. Create a detailed project model that the entire team can use to ensure timely project completion.

Using the model, your team can assess the project’s progress efficiently. This model should include time estimates, task descriptions, assigned resources, time buffers, and completion dates.

Tips 3: Limit Your Team’s Focus

Maintaining individual task focus plays a key role when utilizing the critical chain methodology because doing so will promote more productive, harmonious, collaborative, and innovative behaviors. Each of these elements helps tasks be finished effectively and on time.

Tips 4: Oversee and Evaluate the Project

More than simply setting up the project workflow is required; it is also important to closely monitor how the tasks are developing, one step at a time. Here, a critical chain project management tool is useful for keeping track of development without a hitch.

It is also simpler to track team performance and comprehend the overall project status in real-time when key project metrics are evaluated. Moreover, you can easily modify the procedure for better project results if you come across a variable that needs adjusting.

Wrapping Up

Effectively managing projects and delivering quality services to the clientele is often the most crucial item on the checklist for businesses. Setting up seamless implementation of project management processes and maintaining smooth management for multiple projects also help increase the overall productivity of the team. 

Now you can get in touch with our expert teams and understand all the nuances of critical chain project management today!

Frequently Asked Questions

   

Critical chain project management upholds huge importance in regard to the critical path. It extensively enhances the focus of project managers. By segmenting the project into smaller tasks and concentrating on the critical path, project managers can make sure that they are working on the most crucial tasks. This may contribute to improving the project's overall effectiveness.

There are certain steps to follow if you wish to implement project management critical chain success. These include identifying the critical path, determining resource constraints, inserting buffers, creating a detailed project model, and overseeing the project.

Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt developed the CCPM concept in 1997. The theory of constraints, another theory put forth by Dr. Goldratt, is very similar to CCPM.

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