کاربردهای مدیریت پروژه تئوری محدودیتها فراتر از زمانبندی زنجیره حیاتی

The application of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) is an approach that can be used to develop a variety of management techniques. As a result of the multi-disciplinary nature of project management a variety of different applications within project management are possible. The application of the TOC approach to project scheduling led to the development of the “critical chain” technique that has been the subject of discussions in literature. This paper explains why TOC was initially applied only to project scheduling. A second application of TOC is to manage resources shared by a number of concurrent projects. The basic principles of this second application are discussed in this paper. In addition to the above-mentioned two applications the TOC approach can also be applied to other areas of project management such as project cost management and project risk management.

The Theory of Constraints (TOC) is an approach that is used to develop specific management techniques. It was first popularised by the novel, The Goal [1], that applied the principles to operations management. Since 1997 it has found application in two areas within project management. The first application is scheduling of a single project to reduce project duration and simplify project control. This is the main theme of the novel Critical Chain [2]. Only towards the end of this novel (Chapter 24) there is some indication of a further application to allocate resources that are shared by concurrent projects.

The TOC time management technique (critical chain scheduling) has been extended to allocate resources to multiple projects that share common resources. This application maximises the number of projects that an organisation can handle while maintaining the principles for reducing project duration on each individual project. In addition to the contribution that the TOC approach makes to project scheduling it can also be applied to other areas of project management. Examples of new applications include project risk management and project cost management.