Death March, Second Edition

Chapter 7. Critical-Chain Scheduling and the Theory of Constraints

	The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance—it is the illusion of knowledge.
	--Daniel Boorstin (Librarian of Congress),Washington Post, Jan. 29, 1984

Introduction

An implicit premise of this book, at least for the last several chapters, is that a death march project represents dysfunctional behavior on the part of the customer, end-user, stakeholders, or entire organization—which the project manager has to cope with, survive, and hopefully overcome in a successful fashion. After all, what kind of rational, intelligent, ethical, fair-minded person would ask a project manager to accomplish something in half the amount of time that would normally be scheduled or with half ...