A Project Management Approach to Increasing Agency Margins
Charlene Spoede Budd, Marjorie J. Cooper · Journal of Promotion Management · 2005
Project management is a promising new managerial technique to improve advertising agency productivity and performance. Although PERT/CPM is the most widely accepted project management approach, the Critical Chain technique developed by Eliyahu Goldratt overcomes the widely reported deficiencies of PERT/CPM. Using a hypothetical but realistic set of time estimates for tasks involved in creating an advertising campaign, Critical Chain was tested against PERT/CPM and was shown to reduce project duration by 20%. The authors present the rationale behind the Critical Chain approach and provide an overview of how to schedule and manage a project using this new methodology. This article also discusses the benefits that an advertising agency can derive from using Critical Chain.