Current status and future potential of the research on Critical Chain Project Management

• The state of the art literature on CCPM has been critically and systematically analysed.
• The popularity of CCPM among researchers over time has been discussed.
• Different methodological approaches towards CCPM have been identified and critically discussed.
• The improvements of CCPM over time have been mentioned.
• 21 aspects of CCPM that require more research in the future, mostly necessitating operational research analyses, have been identified.

Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) is a relatively new method introduced by Eliyahu Goldratt in 1997, which attempts to improve the traditional practice of project management by introducing a new mechanism for managing uncertainties in projects. A high number of studies on CCPM have been published since its introduction and it seems it is now time for an extensive review of its literature. This study consults the CCPM literature in an inductive manner in order to investigate the status of ongoing research on CCPM, identify the approaches taken by researchers and their contributions, and suggest areas for future research. The main aim is to describe the current status of research on CCPM and explore CCPM aspects that require more research in the future. This study covers 140 journal and conference papers written on CCPM through an “exhaustive with selective citation” approach identified through online and reference searching. Those papers are categorised into six groups of introductory, critical, improving, empirical, case-reporting and exploiting papers based on their positions on CCPM, using the “hierarchical coding” method. As the result of this research, the current status of research on CCPM is critically reviewed and 21 potential areas of CCPM for future investigations are recommended as a major contribution.