Management of multi-project environment by means of Critical Chain Project Management: A Brazilian multi-case study

The present work discusses the recent experience of Brazilian companies in continued management of multi-project environments by means of Critical Chain Project Management, or CCPM, through a multiple case study conducted on the companies EMBRAER and EMBRACO. The bibliographic review has allowed the determination of conceptual differences among portfolio management, program management, project management and multi-project environment management, has positioned the CCPM inside the roll of multi-project solution algorithms and has identified characteristics that explain its widest adoption in the universe of project management to the detriment of other propositions, although mathematically even more robust than CCPM itself. The field research identified that, among the six practices advocated by the Viable Vision managerial philosophy for the conduction of CCPM, three of them stand out as critical success factors for managing multi-project environments: reducing harmful multitasking, planning and executing. Finally, the data collected indicated that the CCPM brings significant performance gains, especially related to the throughput increase of project delivery, to the management of multi-project environments considering a constant size pool of resources, and that their effective implementation is impacted by the organizational structure and by the company maturity in project management.