Critical Chain – A Book Review by David Hajdu

Most entrepreneurs pick up a business book every now and then and find nuggets of information that they can apply to their business. Rarely though do we find those books entertaining. Critical Chain by Eliyahu M. Goldratt accomplishes both.

The story revolves around a university professor in his final year who is trying to gain tenure in the face of budget cuts. Tasked with finding something new in Project Management, he uses his unique teaching style to work through problems with the students in his executive MBA class.

While the story was fun, the nuggets of information – particularly around estimating and the Theory of Constraints – are what really stood out. In project management, estimation is always one of the most difficult tasks. This is particularly true in software development. What the students found in the professor’s class was that a large part of their estimating challenge stemmed from the safety being added from each individual working on the estimate. Eliyahu teaches us that every project needs a buffer, but that buffer has to be managed at the project level, not the iteration level. It is really important to take the safety out of each step, focus the team on delivering as efficiently as possible, and understand that steps along the way will be late sometimes and will need to tap into the project level buffer.

He also shares some great concepts around how to structure budgets. Often times we think too much about the cost to produce something on time and fail to focus on the bigger picture. How much does a delay in that project cost us in lost revenue opportunity? By thinking through this differently, Project Managers are better able to structure contracts with vendors and internal incentives within the team.

If you’re looking for a good, fast read on Project Management, I’d definitely suggest getting yourself a copy of Critical Chain – http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Chain-Eliyahu-M-Goldratt/dp/0884271536

Critical Chain by Eliyahu M. Goldratt

Welcome to the Vinasource blog!

Welcome to the inaugural post of the Vinasource blog!  Vinasource has been developing software solutions for clients for over 15 fulfilling years – over the course of this time, we learned and gained a tremendous amount of knowledge in areas ranging from software development to consulting, startups, agile methodologies, enterprise development, and business management.  Probably the most important piece of knowledge we’ve gained is, ironically, that we always need to be learning, improving, and evolving.  We’re continuously reading white papers, books, and blog posts to determine how we can grow as a company and service provider and offer the most value to our clients.  We’re also forever learning from our actual real-life experiences and modifying our processes and philosophies to account for new requirements and client needs.

Internally, we’re always sharing our learnings with each other, posting links to great books and articles via email, sharing experiences in our weekly meetings, and refining processes as we find areas of improvement.  As we’ve been rapidly growing (averaging 50% growth annually), our knowledge base rapidly grew as well! We realized that one of our most important learnings, and the key to our success, was open communication and absolute transparency. Thus, we wanted to share our expertise and tools with all of our clients, partners, and peers.  Ergo, the Vinasource blog was born!

We’d love to hear your feedback in the comments section, and hear your take on our perspectives and experiences.  We hope that we can provide some valuable nuggets of knowledge to our readers, and help in your own projects and companies.  Feel free to write to us, ask us questions, and engage with us.  We’re always looking to help fellow businesses and startups, so shoot us an email if you’d ever like to chat.

Until we meet again!

Benjamin Liu, CTO – Vinasource