Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

This cutting-edge work gives you full understanding of the CCPM techniques, tools, and theory you need to develop critical chain solutions and apply them to all types of projects. You get clear instructions on how to build single-project critical chain plans and how to stagger projects in a multiple-project environment. You also learn buffer management techniques for avoiding the pitfalls of committing too much or too little to any specific project, and for meeting project time and cost commitments every time. Moreover, the book integrates key features of PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) with critical chain to help you master key project management skills not covered in other critical chain books, such as scope control and risk management.

This easy-to-follow guide offers you the power to shorten project delivery time, eliminate cost and scheduling over-runs, manage project resources more efficiently, reduce stress on your project team, and finish projects that meet or exceed expectations. Over 100 illustrations help clarify this innovative method that has produced well-documented results in a growing variety of project environments.

Average Customer Rating:

unfortunate	Customer Rating:
Overall a good book. His positions on agile processes should be disregarded, as they fail to address changing requirements. The author suggests that on HIS projects, requirements don't change. Ridiculous. The technique is definitely worth exploring, even if you are not a fan of the PMBOK material. The price of the book is way too high.

Must Have

Customer Rating:

I used this book as my primary reference to learn CCPM and guide me in leading a full implementation of Critical Chain PM across a complete portfolio of Pharmaceutical development projects. The author has taken his extensive experience in PM, TQ, TOC, and PMBOK to first show the reader how these methodologies weave together and then presents a clear and easy to follow walk through of the application of CCPM at the project and portfolio levels. If you are serious about leading edge PM, this is a must have reference. BLR, PMP

A long read on an interesting topic

Customer Rating:

I have always been interested in Critical Chain from a PM perspective and, more generally, the concept of Theory of Constraints. I thought this book would be a great way to extend my knowledge of ToC and to learn about how to move away from critical path. The real meat of this book doesn't even kick in until about Chapter 4. Prior, there are lots of thoughts about the many sins of "critical path" and how we're all doomed to failure if we don't change our ways. Then, the book starts to get into how to actually use the technique. It's a long discussion... without a lot of "knowledge checks" to make sure you understand what is going on. There are technical diagrams, lots of them, many of them without a whole lot of explanation. I found myself occasionally having to re-read sections two or three times to really understand what the author was driving at. I'm sure this is a practical book if used as a "complete reference" but in my opinion it's not a good guide for someone who wants to understand the basics quickly and then gain extensive knowledge of the topic over time.

Good follow-on reading after Goldratt about CCPM

Customer Rating:

While not a devotee of critical chain project management (CCPM), I embrace several features of the approach. Overall, this is a fine book despite some typos and minor organization flaws. Mr. Leach has been promoting, teaching, and consulting in this area for years. It appears that the book is intended to complement his training and consulting---and that's okay. Anecdotes are frequently from questions arising at training or during client implementations. His experience shows. Leach works to integrate concepts from theory of constraints (Goldratt), Project Management Institute's "PMBOK® Guide," lean manufacturing, and Six Sigma. He does this reasonably well, building upon and extending the foundation laid by Goldratt. Some standout features of the book include a) implmentation barriers and issues; b) table of project model (logic) checks; and c) extensive notes and a chapter on implmentation. ---------- The first reading about CCPM should always be "Critical Chain" (1997) by E. Goldratt. This is an easy, insightful reading, by the guy that popularized (invented?) CCPM. Then, before attempting implementation, I suggest studying Larry Leach's (this)book. Another credible guide is "Project Management in the Fast Lane: Applying the Theory of Constraints" (1998) by Robert Newbold

7 pages of errata - RIDICULOUS

Customer Rating:

There are 7 PAGES of errata for this title. http://www.artechhouse.com/GetBLOB.asp?Name=leach%20errata.pdf Many of the critical figures are simply broken. Figure 3.2 for example is supposed to contrast a critical chain project chart with a critical path project chart, but the figures are identical. This severely degrades the utility of this book. I just called Artech House (publisher) and they stated that as of Dec 16, 2005 there is NOT a printing of the book out that corrects these egregious errors. This is ridiculous given the severity of the errors and the fact that it was printed in February 2005. Aside from that, the content of the book is good.