Project Management in the Fast Lane: Applying the Theory of Constraints

Rating:
Summary: Great book - very practical
Review: Short review here - if you can't get projects out on time - read this - it will help a lot!

Rating:
Summary: Proactively deals with inaccurate project estimates
Review: The achilles heal of project management, especially in product development, are the estimates of time and resources. Traditional project management approaches do a lousy job of solving this. For example, although traditional PERT was developed to do this, it is not used. (In fact, in most environments PERT is not defined as the tool but as a network diagram because of this.) Finally, there is an effective approach to proactively dealing with inaccuracy in estimates. The critical chain approach can accomplish this, and this is the best book for defining what critical chain is.

Rating:
Summary: Amazingly good, but does require more material.
Review: This book is a really good next step for those following the TOC debate. It is the non-fiction equivalent of Goldratt's "Critical-Chain". I do believe however that more could be said on managing multiple projects, and an appendix on practical advice showing how to integrate the theory with common software tools (e.g. Microsoft Project) for people who don't want to spend on ProChain would be very nice to have. But these are really just details. Definitely worth the buy!