Rating: 
Summary: Professionaly, very disappointing.
Review: The "Critical Chain" represents old and out of date project management concepts, belonging more to the Industrial Revolution Era. It is based on very wrong concepts regarding the behavior of the project employees, that do not belong to the hi-tech world. Employees in the Hi-Tech environment do not suffer from the "Student Syndrome", or the "Parkinson Effect". On the contrary, they are measured, promoted and rewarded for their efficiency and for their improvement. The only effective management in the Hi-Tech environment is Autonomous Management, and not the old fashioned detailed control that is presented in this book. Some of the ideas presented in the book are very trivial, and not new: chaining tasks that use critical resources, using reserves ("buffers") for time and budget etc. Today, there are much more effective Project Management concepts, proven in the Hi-Tech, Hi-Risk environment, based on the rules of Cybernetics Management.
Rating: 
Summary: Very insiteful for Prject Planning.
Review: I felt the book was written very well. I was left wanting more of an explination of the other areas in which TOC can be used. Such as the example at the end of the book where TOC is used in the accounting world.
Rating: 
Summary: A must read for all IT professionals.
Review: This is an absolute must for all IT professionals/managers. Since some 75 plus percent of all projects are either killed or delievered late by the IT departments. Project management as taught in this book will show you how to deliver on time, without sacrificing quality. Three simple steps, limit multi-tasking, end procrastination, and plan for dependencies are just the beginning, as Eliyahu Goldratt walks you through an entertaining story filled with detailed examples of what it takes to improve your delievery time. IT departments all over the world need to read this book, they need to become more efficient and they need to deliever on time. Critical Chain will make this happen.
Rating:
Summary: great for IS people
Review: This is a must read for any IS manager in the world. It will revolutionize your on-time delivery performance!!!
Rating:
Summary: Very Good. A must read for mgrs in Engineering & Systems!
Review: Very good lessons can be learned as to what delays projects in New Product Development and systems development/implementation. Very eye opening as to the effect of management style on projects and how pressures from top mgmt often interfere with on-time completion. Definitely includes issues that need to be addressed, although there probably are some others as well, such as motivation and training that are not plainly addressed.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting idea, but a little out of touch with reality
Review: While the core idea of Critical Chain is interesting, and may have some positive impact, Goldratt seems to not quite understand the problem. He attributes most project failures and delays to overscheduling--that is, that people build themselves in too much time to do the work required. Instead, he recommends shortening the time allotted so that people have a 50% chance of completion and then adding a buffer at the end. Nice, but I've survived over 25 projects, and the biggest cause of delays was never people sitting idle, or taking longer than necessary to complete a task. The biggest problem in projects is rework resulting from not having done the job right the first time through. This may be in part the nature of the projects I've worked on (consulting and software) which makes it possible to pass through inadequate work which will come back to bite you later, but Goldratt's thinking just doesn't quite ring true to reality. I'd recommend instead Mackenzie Kyle's Making It Happen, or Tom DeMarco's The Deadline.
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Summary: This book is the real deal.
Review: Mr. Goldratt hits the nail on the head when it comes to TOC. Our company had tried for years to implement one type of system or another with only minimal success. Once we started running the company with constraint management in mind we saw overnight results. The best part is we can keep improving on the initial success. This type of management will work in every type of business or situation.
Rating:
Summary: Breaks paradigms about project management
Review: Harris Semiconductor used many of the principles in "Critical Chain" to bring a new semiconductor factory online in only 13 months (less than half the industry norm)- 13 months from groundbreaking to first production lots! "Leading the Way to Competitive Excellence: The Harris Mountaintop Case Study," also available from Amazon.com, applies Goldratt's Theory of Constraints to manufacturing management, and it briefly mentions "Critical Chain" and project management. Murphy, Lauffer, and Levinson, "Project Raptor," in Future Fab International, Issue 3 vol. 1 p. 117, show techniques from "Critical Chain" at work in the real world. The principles from "Critical Chain" (and "The Goal") are not just academic theories: they WORK. Goldratt's "The Goal" is more gripping (and the book on tape version, also available from Amazon.com is excellent), but anyone who manages projects and is into techniques like the Critical Path Method (CPM) needs to understand the material in "Critical Chain." William A. Levinson, P.E.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but not as good as The Goal
Review: TOC is OK for simple operations that are run by really stupid managers, but fails to offer a lot of assistance for real world problems in a moderately complex organization. I think the book High-Mix Low Volume Manufactring by Mahoney does a much better, if much more boring, job of explaining the complex decision making process that is really needed. For example, it is rare that operations or logistics knows the status of jobs, or the operators, or the equipment, or the material, as well as is needed to take full advantage of any of the techniques, even in a fairly small plant. This results in information "noise". Add to this variable delay time, and the combination acts to reduce the effectiveness of any control system: this is basic feedback theory. TOC works well in stable (low mix) environments, but may not lead to the most efficient operation in other settings.
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Summary: Essential introduction to TOC applied to PM
Review: 40% of this novel is story, 60% is information. Half of the latter is a repetition of The Goal (explaining the Theory of Constraints). This, however, makes this new book so easy to read. It is almost like a follow-up to the setting at the plant. Really interesting are the last two pages: two independent variables are needed to describe investment (unit is "dollar-days"). But this, of course, means that TIME ISN'T MONEY...
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