Business Fiction - A New Genre

This book is horrific from a literary perspective - shallow, predictable characters with almost soap-opera like qualities. Please ignore the slow start where these unimpressive characters are introduced.

This book is brilliant because of the way it weaves a deeper meaning and education of project management into a plausible and interesting plotline, which makes up for the characters that carry it.

This book is not for the uninitiated. It's chocked full of jargon and concepts that people who have never studied project management would never understand. For those who have had a course or two on project management or even a weeklong seminar and for whom project management is a reality, the book has a clarity and focus that reaches beyond anything I've seen in any period of instruction on the topic. However, you must speak the project management language to follow the gist of the book.

As someone who has managed projects for years and studied project management, this book helped me achieve a new level of thinking and analysing business models, assumption, problems, workflows and more.

This book is truly brilliant. Did I start out by saying its bad literature? It is. And it's brilliant!

26 people found this helpful

Hated the changing voices

I had high hopes that the multiple voice actors would mean a female would play the female parts and the two men would play the key characters from the book. I was disappointed. Some chapters were read by the female doing all parts and others were by one or the other men. There was one chapter where it sounded like the men changed mid-sentence. I loved the book and I can't wait to apply TOC to my projects but the recording really threw me for a loop.

11 people found this helpful

Just alright

Any additional comments?

I purchased this book as someone who has never been in a Project Management role and wanted to learn more about the position. I was able to learn the basics through some of the use cases in the book and some interesting points I would have never thought about. However, overall I found myself losing interest as the book continued and felt like I wasn't learning anything new past the halfway point.

One byproduct that I did take from the audio though is a great way of teaching a class. I instruct classes and I really liked the teachers methods in delivering his material.

5 people found this helpful

A Must Read for any business library!

Excellent and accessible for a wide audience. The best and most complete explanation for significant theories.

4 people found this helpful

Lack of Different Voices & Hard to Understand

Didn't like the lack of different voices. Male and female roles were by a male. Only one male voice throughout. The book is all over the place and hard to follow and understand. This issue only makes it even more of a challenge.

3 people found this helpful

A link of manufacturing to projects

As a manufacturing engineer, this is the most relevant book I've read to drive project completion. Easy to follow, entertaining, and educational. A link of the structured manufacturing flow to project flow that makes sense, and it's sustainable.

2 people found this helpful

Better Than it Feels

This book is better than the sum of the individual reviewable elements. Cheesy story and performances, but the lessons will stay with me throughout my career.

1 person found this helpful

interdisciplinary ToC brilliance

This work proves the interdisciplinary application of ToC as the Unico universe started by the first books expands outside the production field. Brilliant!

1 person found this helpful

Casting characters to voices would improve this

The insights in this book are fantastic, but the narration was hard to follow. Female characters and male characters were voiced by different narrators in different chapters. This made it much harder to follow than necessary.

The last chapter seemed incongruous with the rest, and wasn't satisfying, but I appreciated the insight it offered on justifying investments.

1 person found this helpful

Our business has followed this theory for 12 years

Would you consider the audio edition of Critical Chain to be better than the print version?

The print version may have the advantage over the audiobook solely due to Dr Goldratt's accent. It is difficult to understand what he is saying at times. My experience with the Critical Chain was an advantage for me to listen to this audiobook.

What did you like best about this story?

The unique business advantage and opportunity that is learned from the content

Who would you have cast as narrator instead of the narrators?

Unknown but with respect, not Dr Goldratt.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I have experienced the content of this book in my business so any reaction would be more of a renewed sense of experience.

Any additional comments?

I've read many of Dr Goldratt's books and I am a firm believer in the concept of the Critical Chain.

1 person found this helpful