[MUSIC] This module is about critical chain project management. In this short module, the main features of critical chain project management, denoted as CCPM, are presented. A good reference of CCPM is a book by Eliyahu M Goldratt, the North River Press Publishing Corporation, 1997. This approach by Eliyahu M Goldratt has not gained universal acceptance. Although it is being used by a few organization with some positive results in terms of completing the project early and with less cost. In India, Laboratories is one such organization that uses this approach for drug discovery projects. CCPM is a method of planning and managing projects that places great emphasis on the estimation of activity durations. According to Goldratt, most of the persons that have to perform an activity would estimate the required duration so that there is at least 90% chance of completing the activity on time. In other words, activity durations are overestimated. As we discussed in an earlier module, despite this overestimation, there may be several reasons why the projects are delayed. Goldratt's contention is that you should reduce the estimated duration so that each activity is only 50% chance of being completed on time. The rationale for this is that not all the activities will take more time than the reduced duration. Furthermore, CCPM prefers a late start schedule because you want to delay as much as possible the cost incurred in performing an activity. Considering both the precedence and resource dependencies. A Critical Chain is a sequence of activities that are critical in the sense that if any one of them takes more time than its estimated duration then the project will get delayed from its calculated completion time. If resources are available as and when required, i.e., there's no resource limitation, critical chain is the same as the critical path. CCPM recognizes that because of the reduction in activity duration, some, but not all, the activities may get delayed. Furthermore, because of the late start schedule, the slack in the system is reduced considerably. To counter this possible delay in project completion time, CCPM provides two types of buffers. One is a project buffer that provides some cushion for the delay in project completion time because one or more activities in the critical part are delayed. Another type of buffer that is provided is for a Non-Critical Activity, which is a predecessor of an activity on the critical chain. The rationale for this is that you do not want an activity on the critical chain to be delayed because its predecessor, which is not on the critical chain, is delayed. There's no rule as far as amount of the two types of buffers to be provided. This is judgmental and are based on experience, if any. An important point to keep in mind is that buffer times are provided only for use in exceptional instances. Not to be used for routine purposes. The various steps in CCPM can be summarized as follows. Step 1, arrive at very aggressive time estimates. This is done by first getting the estimates from the concerned persons and reducing the same as is deemed to be desirable. Step 2, arrive at a schedule, preferably a late start schedule, considering resource requirements. This would, of course, require the use of heuristics as we discussed earlier. Step 3, identify the Critical Chain and the activities where the buffers are to be provided. Such activities are those which are predecessors of one or more activities on the critical chain. Step 4, determine the buffer size for the project as well as for the activities identified in Step 3, based on judgment and / or on experience. Step 5, after incorporating the buffers arrive at the schedule for all the activities. Step 6, as the project progresses, the erosion of the buffers needs to be monitored. And corrective action should be taken whenever there is only a limited amount of time left in a buffer while there is substantial amount of work still to be completed. The organization culture is an important factor in the success of CCPM. The support of top management is essential for implementing CCPM. Initially, the activity durations may vary considerably. But if CCPM is accepted in the organization, the amount of padding for subsequent projects gets reduced drastically. The project manager should encourage the team members to make aggressive time estimates. And not always penalize them when there's a delay in completing an activity. The role of the project manager is to identify instances where the delay is beyond the control of the member working on that activity. And those instances where the delay would have been avoided by more diligence from the concerned member. The project manager should mentor the team members. Especially when the delay in completing the activity could have been avoided. This completes our short module on critical chain project management. [MUSIC]