Critical Chain

Goldratt's business novel applying the theory of constraints to project management. The story follows a business school lecturer and his students as they work out why projects overrun even when every individual task carries generous safety, and the answer turns on padding hidden inside estimates, student syndrome and multitasking across projects. The method that emerges strips safety from individual tasks and pools it into buffers placed on the critical chain, which is the longest path once resource contention is accounted for. It also covers running a portfolio of projects by staggering them against the constraining resource. This is the origin text for critical chain project management.