Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) is more powerful and resource-driven than Critical Path Project Management. CCPM is based on methods and algorithms derived from the Theory of Constraints. The Critical Chain is the sequence of both precedence- and resource-dependent tasks that prevents a project from being completed in a shorter time, given finite resources. If (non-human) resources are always available in unlimited quantities, then a project’s Critical Chain is identical to its Critical Path.

You can view this PowerPoint presentation (with audio included) to learn more about Critical Chain Project Management.

By leveraging Aurora’s sophisticated scheduling system with CCPM theory, a much more robust solution has been developed: Aurora-CCPM. Resource constraints (e.g., available equipment, space, and human resources) are very important to the implementation of the Critical Chain method because it more heavily considers them when compared to Critical Path. Fortunately, Aurora-CCPM takes into account resource requirements, a variety of constraints, and can be adapted to pertinent domain knowledge. This is especially critical during the execution phase of a CCPM plan as real-time updates arrive regarding the status of the hundreds or thousands of tasks that make up the plan.

Aurora-CCPM greatly enhances the practicality and power of the Critical Chain method:

• Critical Chain can now be applied to projects encompassing thousands of tasks
• It can also be used to handle complex emergency-type situations, where new tasks are inserted during the actual execution of the plan.

Because resources are so important to Critical Chain, Aurora-CCPM includes powerful graphical tools to help manage resources and resource sets:

Flexible dynamic histograms of resource usage are available

Aurora-CCPM provides an interactive graphical user interface to enter scheduling requirements and domain-specific knowledge quickly and easily. These interactive displays enable the user to visualize and edit the schedule’s resource allocations and the temporal relationships among activities. Scheduling problems, such as unresolved conflicts, are highlighted to attract the user’s attention.

All the capabilities expected in modern project software are included. For example, Gantt charts with progress bars.

Aurora-CCPM includes a flexible Fever Chart allowing customization as shown in the following two figures.

For more, please see the Screenshots page.