The it in the academic world. he is

The book is about an associateprofessor named Rick Silver who is struggling to make it in the academic world. He is a very good teacher, but he needs publications. His area is projectmanagement and he want the articles to make a difference in this field. The theoriesthat he had applied to project management are not that effective and projectsare not cost efficient.

The work is moving at very slow pace, but he gets hismotivation when he is assigned to teach a course in an Executive MBA course. During the course, professor Silverand his students develop the concept of the “ CriticalChain”. The teaching of professorSilver is conversation with the students aboutdifferent topics. The students gethomework to do and in this course the homework tasksbecomes case studies for thetheories that they develop in the classes. He is also helped by thefact that three of his students areinvolved in a project at their company to develop a way tocut product development time. Throughout the book differentconcepts of project management are covered. The inspiration for the criticalchain comes from the “ Theory of Constraints”, which is taught by anotherprofessor in production management. Theory of Constraints identifies the bottleneckor constraint, exploits it and then subordinates all other activities to thatbottleneck.

The same concept is shownthroughout the book to apply to project management as well onseveral levels. As mentioned the teaching anddevelopment of the “ Critical Chain” theory is the mainstory. At the same time storiesabout Rick Silvers personal life, problems with economyat the university and some casesfrom the companies where the students apply the theory, runin parallel. The economy problemalmost makes the promotion of Rick impossible, but thenew discoveries hemakes in the course and the support it gets from the industry, supports his survival.