A Study of Using Simulation to Overcome Obstacles That Block the Implementation of Critical Chain Project Management to Project Management Environment

Abstract

Since 1997, the Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) method has received considerable attention. Hundreds of successful CCPM cases have achieved highly reliable on-time delivery (OTD) with short project lead-time (PLT) in multi-project environments. However, two obstacles have remained, blocking the implementation of CCPM to project management (PM) society. The first has been addressed by PM practitioners, who have been less than confident that OTD and PLT can be significantly improved by simply changing the way to manage multi-projects. The second is from academia: some scholars have claimed that the ideas of CCPM are not new and are of no substantial contribution to Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). In this study, we first used multi-project management games to overcome the first obstacle. A comparative study of CCPM and Program Evaluation and Review Technique/Critical Path Method (PERT/CPM) planning methods, excluding bad human behaviors, was then conducted to overcome the second obstacle. The simulation results show that: (1) the “mode of managing multi-projects” was the root cause, and changing the mode of managing multi-project could significantly improve OTD and PLT; (2) in terms of mean project time, CCPM is not significantly better than PERT/CPM. However, in terms of plan reliability, CCPM achieves higher than PERT and CPM. This is due to a CCPM logistical change that generates a more reasonable and reliable project plan than do the PERT/CPM methods.