High Performance

Concerning the content of the book it is I think, good to have some knowledge about project

management and critical chain theory before reading it. By that I mean that the background

from the Project management course was enough to understand the problems and enjoy the

book. Through the classes of professor Silver and the problems of the students the reader is

introduced to the TOC, critical path and critical chain. Different topics are explained through

the answers to questions that the students address. Other concepts such as the "Triple

Constraint" of project management are covered.

In the lectures the class identifies the problems their projects are having, and from that the

theory is developed. The classes usually ends with some consensus about the problems often

stated as professor Silvers summary of the lecture. These statements I think are conceptual

errors that occur in project management and may work as warnings or helpful tips within ones

own project if one bears them in mind. An example is:

"There is no way to achieve good throughput performance through good local performance"

By that one means that one must optimise the system as a whole, which implies identifying

the bottleneck.

The book will not function as a reference book, because of the form of the book, but it serves

it's purpose as an inspiration and introduction to the problems and solutions (at least

according to this theory).

How will this affect my work? Well what I can say that it was very inspiring to read after

dealing with the topic in our classes and I look forward to learning more in our coming

lectures. The method appears effective and with the additional tools we have learned about on

how to discover when the project is eating into the buffer, it appears even more suitable. As

my PhD-project is moving towards it's end I will use the method to try and keep myself on

track to reach the degree at end of next year. At least I will be able to structure my work in

such a way that I identify the necessary tasks to reach it. Hopefully I will also be able to use