Buffering Against Risk— Critical Chain and Risk Management

Critical Chain project management has received considerable attention since the publication of Eliyahu M. Goldratt’s Critical Chain in 1997. Most of this attention has been focused on the areas of schedule development. But the details of the scheduling methodology—the protected critical chain versus a volatile critical path, just-in-time starts replacing as-soon-as-possible starts, the eschewing of task due dates and use of buffers of time to protect the project’s promise and monitor its progress—are only means to an end. That end is speed and reliability of project performance unencumbered by conflicting pressures and behaviors. And reliability of project promises is as much a result of effective risk management as it is of effective planning and scheduling. The major beneficial effects of the Critical Chain approach come from the linking of scope and time management to risk management. The intimate interactions of these processes in Critical Chain make them difficult to pigeonhole in the current taxonomy of the body of knowledge, and therefore, they can easily be overlooked. The conduits for these interactions are found primarily in the development and use of schedule buffers and in the process of Buffer Management.