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About the Author
Ed D. Walker II, Associate Professor of Management at Valdosta State University, is from Milledgeville, Georgia He is recognized as a CPIM by APICS and as a Jonah by the Avraham Y. Goldratt Institute and is certified in TOC project management, the TOC thinking processes, and TOC operations management by the Theory of Constraints International Certification Organization. He has a BS in Business Administration and Math/Physics from Presbyterian College and an MBA in Finance from Auburn University. Prior to receiving his PhD in Operations Management at the University of Georgia, Dr. Walker worked in production planning and control, distribution, and plant management in both the food processing and textile industries. He has published over 20 journal and conference articles in the areas of Theory of Constraints, project management, manufacturing planning and control systems, performance measurement, and classroom pedagogy. Two young children keep Dr. Walker and his wife quite busy. He enjoys volunteering at his church, working outdoors, officiating high school football, as well as hunting and fishing.
CHAPTER 3
A Critical Chain Project Management Primer
Charlene Spoede Budd and Janice Cerveny
Introduction
As evidenced by their support of professional certification from the Project Management Institute,1 organizations want to improve their project management skills. Even though the profession has recognized the need to improve and companies seriously try to improve their project management maturity, most are still on the lower levels of a typical five-level project management maturity model, and few have reached the top levels involving continuous improvement.
The previous chapter, by Ed Walker, is an excellent review of the entire history of project management. The next three chapters, one by Realization, one by Rob Newbold, and one by AGI, cover the latest Critical Chain (CC) advances. Compared to the other chapters in this section, this chapter contains tutorial material on how CC works, along with some implementation suggestions. Our basic assumption is that the reader knows little or nothing about Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM).
Why These Widespread Project-Related Problems Persist
Chapter 2 clearly outlines a host of very familiar problems with which project managers (PMs) continue to struggle. History suggests that a definitive solution is elusive.
Throughout his professional life, Eli Goldratt has stressed how complex and chaotic situations can be handled with a simple five-step approach (first detailed in Goldratt and Cox, 1984; Goldratt, 1990, 59–62). This same approach applies to project management (Leach, 2005, 52–54). The first of the five