Qualitative Techniques for Project Management. III.b. Critical Chain - Modern Technique for

The present article explores in detail the Critical Chain planning method and the way it affects the total duration of a project. Accurate estimation of tasks duration is one of the main prerequisites for an efficient project implementation. Another condition concerns the availability of resources, in terms of removing conflicts between concurrent tasks and limited resources. Similar to the Critical Path, Critical Chain is dealing with time reserves, but these time reserves are handled in a different manner. To "protect" the project delivery date, it is common to reschedule the start of a task earlier, this being facilitated by the elimination of unnecessary time reserves. Planning tasks is executed in a different way, in order to reduce the number of tasks that start at the same time. Apparently, the project duration will expand, by providing a time reserve for the end of the project, but eliminating inefficient multitasking ensures a substantial economy of time, safe from common time-wasting phenomena that occur in the Critical Path method.