More on Ensemble's approach to Project Management

At Ensemble, we believe that Project Management provides the bridge between a strategy and the reality of having innovative products or services in the marketplace.

Ensemble’s approach to Project Management differs from traditional project management in that it is based on the Critical Chain, as opposed to the Critical Path.

Most organisations run many projects simultaneously, while sharing the same resource pool across divisional, product or geographic organisational boundaries. Ensemble has a proven track record of helping clients to set up program offices, based on a combination of the classical PMBOK^® (Project Management Body of Knowledge) approach with the innovative Critical Chain project method. Our results consistently show faster, more predictable and more profitable project outcomes.

The goal of all projects is to complete on schedule, to budget and to scope.

Traditional project management identifies the longest chain of dependent events, from the beginning to the end of a project. This chain, known as the critical path, looks at task dependencies only, and does not take into account resource contention – the fact that a resource may be needed in two or more places at any one time.

Ensemble’s approach takes the resourcing requirements explicitly into account and produces the Critical Chain. A technique known as buffer management is then used to deal with uncertainty, random variations and the human behavioural aspects that make up the reality of project management.

Critical Chain is applicable in both the single project environment (Critical Chain Single Project) and in the multiple or matrix-project environment (Critical Chain Multi-Project Management)

The results are staggering – projects are brought in much faster, more reliably, with greater visibility of project progress, and less stress for all involved. Ensemble’s Multi-Project Management approach can release between 30% and 50% additional capacity in an organisation, without any significant increase in overheads.

While the use of Critical Chain Single Project management (CCSP) can provide extraordinary gains in the execution of individual projects, most organisations have numerous projects running at the same time – be they product development, business improvement, marketing, capital investment or any number of others – and these projects share resources from the same pool!

More often than not, the reporting structure of the resources is in some sort of matrix, based on functional responsibility, geographic representation, product accountability or some combination of these. This matrix structure invariably results in conflict between project managers and resource managers over the allocation of individuals and resources as, without a global view of the entire organisation’s project portfolio, people will optimise their own area of accountability.

• Acceleration in lead-time gained through the use of the Critical Chain Single Project method
• A method of governing the rate at which new projects are launched into the project pipeline
• The use of buffer management principles to ensure that people are always working where they will deliver the maximum value to the entire portfolio of projects – not just the individual project or task owner's work quota.