1.WHERE ARE WE GOING

WITH CRITICAL CHAIN?

This issue of Cutter IT Journal is

devoted to examining critical

chain project management

(CCPM). This innovation in project

management is — as our first article

will attest — still unknown in

many circles, but it has already

changed the experience and results

of project teams in a wide variety

of industries and companies.

For the past 15 years of my life, I

have focused on learning, applying,

and institutionalizing breakthrough

business processes. While

learning and becoming certified

in more three-letter acronyms

than I care to disclose, I’ve had the

opportunity to witness amazing

results and improvements. I’ve

also witnessed mammoth change

programs fail, despite many millions

of dollars in funding and more

resources than the organizations in

question knew what to do with.

The discussions that accompany

the introduction of new ideas and

techniques have always puzzled

me somewhat. While much is said,

the amount of substantive discussion

tends to be minimal. Instead,

people share rumors, impressions,

and off-the-cuff remarks they’ve

heard from friends of friends. At

times, the process is reminiscent of

urban legends. Amid some stories

of success, disparaging comments

abound: “Nothing new … not practical

… not needed … I found a

company that’s trying to implement

this for others, but they’re not

making any money … I’ve heard

about a company that tried this,

and it didn’t work.”

A question people commonly ask

about CCPM is, “If critical chain is

so superior, why isn’t everyone

doing it?” This is like the joke about

the two economists walking along

and spotting something on the sidewalk.

“Isn’t that a $100 bill?” asks

the one. “It couldn’t be,” says the

other. “If it were, someone would

have already picked it up.”

Behind this simple rebuttal lie

more serious reservations facing

any new approach that promises

great results and requires initial

investment of time, money, and

learning to achieve. There will

always be a healthy level of skepticism

toward such solutions. We

shouldn’t even be surprised when

we find there are companies that

absolutely believe that the new

approach is far superior but still

don’t move ahead, for reasons we

don’t fully understand.

Critical chain project management

promises to change product development.

This might be insignificant

if we didn’t live in a time when

organizations are expected to

continually reinvent products and

processes just to compete. Projects

have become the means of focusing

knowledge workers on the

results that drive sales, profits, share

prices, and salaries. CCPM matters

because it holds the keys to changing

the experience and results of

project teams. We haven’t offered

an article on why projects matter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You know that they do, and that’s

probably why you’ve read this far.

The two preceding paragraphs

suggest that resistance to or acceptance

of a new process depends

purely upon reason. One difference

between product innovation (for

example, the Segway) and a

process innovation is the matter of

adoption. An innovator can prove

that, say, a light bulb works without

having to explain the underlying

concepts and principles to customers

of the bulb. By contrast, an

innovation in how we do something

requires the people who adopt it to

understand and accept it before

“the light bulb goes on.” It’s not

enough for the innovator to act on

his or her convictions. The people

adopting the process are the ones

who must act. The adoption of new

processes requires more than reason

— it requires a gut-level conviction

that the approach deserves

time and attention.

 

By :by Bill Lynch ( Cutter IT Journal)

 

2. "CCPM’s Visibility Problem"

When first approached to do an

article on critical chain project

management (CCPM), I was initially

hesitant. I am not exactly

unfamiliar with conventional project

management, having authored

courses and given seminars on the

subject for nearly 20 years. I’ve also

actually managed (pun intended)

to successfully manage numerous

projects for several Fortune 500

organizations. I was, however,

unfamiliar with the use of the term

“critical chain” used in conjunction

with “project management.” In

short, I’d never heard of it.

Now, speaking as a consultant who

makes his living working with systems

planning and development

methodologies, I will be the first to

admit that I don’t stay up with every

single advance in every single area

of systems improvement. I’m not

sure anyone can and still get any

real work done. Therefore, I wasn’t

particularly surprised that I had

never heard of critical chain project

management. I just assumed it

was a new technique that had surfaced

while I was off doing other

consulting projects. So like any

good author, I decided to do a bit of

research before I decided whether

or not to write the article.

NO STONE UNTURNED

To my surprise, there seemed to

be ample information on the Web

about critical chain project management

going back about five or

six years. So it apparently wasn’t a

particularly new technique, after

all. And in reading through the literature,

it seemed as though CCPM

had proven successful in the organizations

that had tried it. It didn’t

look like some academic, ivorytower

philosophy or one suited to

only smaller, simpler organizations.

Big-name organizations like ITT,

Lucent, Seagate, and Harris were

having success with it. I therefore

assumed that even though I had

never heard of the method, I would

have no trouble finding a colleague

or two who had a firsthand experience

to share.

I contacted a few of my acquaintances

here in the Kansas City area,

that do project management consulting

(and actual PM) on a fulltime

basis, to gather some of their

experiences and impressions. What

I found did come as a surprise. Not

only did I not know anything about

CCPM, none of the people I contacted

knew anything about the

method either.

I first contacted my friend Dan

McCune, who is president of

the Kansas City chapter of the

Microsoft Project Users Group-

Global (KCMPUG) to see what

he knew about CCPM. He wasn’t

familiar with the term (I think his

exact words were “What kind of

project management?”). I thought

that was a bit odd, since in addition

to being a great project manager,

Dan had just completed his Project

Management Professional (PMP)

certification through the Project

Management Institute. I would

have thought that PMP certification

would cover any hugely successful

project management technique, no

matter how recently it had been

developed.

My timing in talking with Dan

proved fortuitous, however, as it

turned out that KCMPUG was meeting

later that evening. So I prevailed

upon Dan to take an informal poll

for me and see if any of the other

 

by David Higgins

 

 

 

Last updated 582 days ago by P T Srinivas