Critical Chain Analysis Using Project Management Software

Abstract

Previously in this journal, Umble and Umble (2000) discussed Goldratt’s “critical chain” (Goldratt 1997) for project scheduling. In this article, we show that explicitly defining the critical chain in a resource constrained project schedule will help avoid errors in slack calculation. Because these slacks can help identify the feeding buffers in critical chain analysis and prepare the backward schedules for the activities, it is important to identify them correctly.