Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) is a method of planning and managing projects developed by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt, based on his Theory of Constraints. It focuses on the resources required to execute project tasks and aims to improve project delivery reliability and speed.
The core insight
Traditional project management embeds safety time inside individual task estimates. People then use that safety time — due to Parkinson's Law, student syndrome, or multi-tasking — and projects are still late. CCPM removes the hidden buffers from tasks, cuts durations, and consolidates the saved time as explicit project buffers placed at the end of the critical chain.
The three implementation steps
- 1Sort & Stagger — List all projects sorted by due-date. Estimate remaining effort per skill. Divide by skill capacity to see the queue length and identify the constraint. Adjust start dates so the constraint is slightly underloaded. Stop working on paused projects and stop multi-tasking.
- 2Templates & Buffers — Build a small set of project templates and assign them to the active projects. Apply CCPM buffer logic: shorten task durations and place the gained time as a project-end buffer. Train the team to report remaining duration on open tasks daily and go live.
- 3Fever Curves & Priority — Collect remaining task durations every day. Calculate critical-chain progress versus buffer consumption and display it as a fever curve. Assign all resources and attention to projects with high buffer consumption relative to progress.
Why it works
By shifting safety time from individual tasks to project buffers, CCPM makes hidden risk visible, removes the incentive to pad estimates, eliminates harmful multi-tasking, and creates a simple priority signal — the fever curve — that everyone can follow.