Selected Product:
| Critical Chain : A Business Novel
Paperback
Author: Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Publisher: North River Press
Release Date: 1997-04
ISBN-10: 0884271536
ISBN-13: 9780884271536
List Price: $19.95
Average Customer Rating:
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The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
ISBN-10: 0884271781
ISBN-13: 9780884271789
List Price:$24.95
It's Not Luck
ISBN-10: 0884271153
ISBN-13: 9780884271154
List Price:$19.95
Theory of Constraints
ISBN-10: 0884271668
ISBN-13: 9780884271666
List Price:$19.95
The Race
ISBN-10: 0884270629
ISBN-13: 9780884270621
List Price:$15.00
Necessary But Not Sufficient
ISBN-10: 0884271706
ISBN-13: 9780884271703
List Price:$19.95
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Powerful yet simple techniques to solve project management's toughest problems. This book teaches companies to drastically cut project development times resulting in early completion within budget and without compromising quality or specifications.
Goldratt Weaves Another Great Story!
| Customer Rating: | Stories are one of the best ways to teach and Eliyahu Goldratt is a master story teller! In Critical Chain Goldratt weaves a tale to teach concepts to project managers on how to drive down schedule time, and reduce product cost using Theory of Constraints (TOC). It is an extension of the concepts taught in the Goal, but this time for project management rather than process management.
The problem management (at a factitious company) face in this book is their products have a short life span (6 months), but a long development time (2 years). Consequently they have to continually develop new products. To compound their problems, if they miss picking a good product, or launch an inferior product they could loose significant market share. Company loyalty just isn't what it used to be.
Fortunately, management realizes it is not a matter of "if" but "when" they will stumble. They assign a tiger team of young blood to drive down development time. This team has no idea where to start, and this book is the story of their journey of discovery.
The reader is taken on the journey with the team and learns about resources, bottlenecks, buffers, critical paths, constraints and more. By learning how to apply The Theory of Constraints the team (and the reader) is able to discover ways of reducing product development time significantly.
Overall, this is another excellent book by Eliyahu Goldratt. I learned a great deal from the Goal and Critical Chain. Goldratt is on a mission to change project management (and process management) from an art to a science. He does a great job at providing the tools and techniques for anyone willing to learn and apply these powerful concepts!
The Re-Discovery of Common Sense: A Guide to: The Lost Art of Critical Thinking
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
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Starting Point for TOC Applied to Projects
| Customer Rating: | This book is about applying TOC to project management. After reading this book I understood why TOC for project management is not as straight forward as it might first appear. Not only are projects not repeatable like production assembly lines buts in a multi-project environment you need to take shared resources into account. This is even more difficult when the managers for each project are different people. Lessons learned:
- Estimates should be "In X days with 50% chance of completion"
- Cut estimates in 2 or 3 if suspect that tasks have padding
- All the padding should go for the project but less than sum of padding
- Add time buffers (at no cost) when paths merge with critical path
- If a resource is shared between projects then it may be a bottleneck
- Resource bottlenecks should be treated as such: identify, exploit, subordinate, elevate...
- No due dates so as not to encourage the "student syndrome"
Of all the business novels by Eli Goldratt, I think that this is the one that I have learned the most from. As with all his novels, it's easy and fun to read with the added benefit that you will have learnt to better manage your projects. A must. |
Critical chain in the series.
| Customer Rating: | You're a project manager? This book is good.
You're not a project manager? You can learn from this, as being a single mom is being a project manager as well. It doesn't have the magic though if you can't transform knowledge to wisdom and that's where this book comes up short.
Although TOC is taken one step further, this book is on the edge of the four star rating. It does give manager some valuable insights which were missing in the previous books and is still fun to read and maybe it makes me long for not having read the previous books yet... |
Enjoyable and useful
| Customer Rating: | This book is well written; easy to read and to understand. It includes a bunch of useful concepts in a smooth way, so you assimilate the almost without effort.
Since it is written like a novel, rather than a textbook, I found myself reading it eagerly and I finished it in very few days. On the other hand, it is not suitable as a reference book.
In conclusion, if you want to introduce in project managing from a practical point of view just buy it, it really pays off |
Innovative
| Customer Rating: | An interesting concept presented in an innovative novel. Easy to read and follow. Just like a novel once you start, it is a page turner and hard to put down.
I highly recommend this along with Goldratt's first novel, The Goal. |
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