Exam Schedule and Registration

Project Management Practitioner Exam

Pre-requisite:  An applicant must have already proved general knowledge of TOC Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) concepts as evidenced by passing the TOC Fundamentals exam or CCPM Fundamentals exam.

Upon successfully completing the CCPM Practitioner Exam, the candidate will become TOC Practitioner Certified (TOCPC™) in Critical Chain Project Management, demonstrating their ability to apply, analyze and evaluate the knowledge of this TOC solution area.  They will also receive full endorsement from TOCICO, with their accomplishment recognized on our website while they maintain active membership.

THIS IS AN 8 HOUR EXAMINATION, broken into (2) 4-hour parts.  It is available in English, Spanish, German, Korean and Portuguese.

• Member price $200.00
• Non-member price $297.00 (includes 1 year of Standard TOCICO membership)

 The following key elements are being evaluated in this exam through a combination of different types of questions:

Please note that base-level competencies in Critical Chain Project Management, as evaluated in the Fundamentals Exams and presumed to be in place for the Practitioner Exam, include:

• The ability to identify the critical chain and its length in a single-project network (given padded activity times and some resource contention)
• Recognizing that activity times should be reduced by 50% initially, with smaller reductions applied later
• Correctly sizing buffers to be 50% of the reduced durations
• Removing resource contention to minimize total project lead time
• Scheduling tasks by pushing them as late as possible, then working backward
• Accurately sizing and positioning the required buffers

1. Project Management Fundamentals

   Objective: Demonstrate the ability to compare and contrast the differences between Theory of Constraints’ Critical Chain and traditional project management methodologies and demonstration of base knowledge regarding CCPM beyond that which is evaluated in the Fundamentals Exam.

   1. Can contrast conventional rules and practices for project network building, scheduling and control metrics with those of Critical Chain Project Management beyond those evaluated at the Fundamentals level.

   2. Knows how CCPM addresses each of the following:

      1. Resource Contention that emerges after buffers have been inserted

      2. Gaps that emerge in the Critical Chain due to insertion of feeding buffers

      3. Emergence of an apparently "new” Critical Chain due to the insertion of feeding buffers

   3. Can explain why items B(i) – B(iii) could be a trap of optimization.

   4. Demonstrates understanding re: Project Planning

      1. Defining project scope

      2. Build the project network and work breakdown structure

      3. Correctly identifying the drum or synchronizer

      4. Can address traditional costing, ‘crashing’, and resource leveling, etc. issues

   5. Knows the difference between single-project and multi-project solutions.

2. TOC Thinking Processes & Project Management

   Objective: Demonstrate the ability to analyze any environment and its project management system using the four fundamental questions of the thinking process.

   1. Why change?

      1. Knows the goals of the project function, and

      2. Knows how failure to meet its goals impacts the other entities in the system.

   2. What to change?

      1. Understands the core conflict in single- and multi-project environments,

      2. Knows the fundamental limitation that CCPM enables organizations to overcome,

      3. Able to answer the 4 breakthrough technology questions from Necessary and Sufficient,

      4. Can verbalize the specific key assumptions in the conflict and demonstrate and demonstrate how they cause the specific, common undesirable effects

   3. What to change to?

      1. Is able to create the necessary injections:

         1. that overcome the erroneous assumptions that underlie the core conflicts in project management for any type of organizational system

         2. demonstrates the ability to build the logical connections from the proposed injections to appropriate predicted effects)

      2. Can identify situations when (and can demonstrate ability to use TP tools) to generate appropriate additional injections that are required to create a customized solution to address common concerns and/or to create the necessary buy-in. Sample situations could include:

         1. Vendor problems

         2. Changes to scope

         3. Team, resource manager and project manager conflicts

         4. "Escalation of commitment”

         5. Pressure to cut the buffers

         6. Challenges to staggering projects’ release

   4. How to cause the change?

      1. Has sufficient knowledge to identify and communicate obstacles as well as derive intermediate objectives that predictably arise due to CCPM especially regarding the use of the three primary components of CCPM (staggering, buffering and buffer management)

      2. Can develop IO maps and PRTs

      3. Is knowledgeable about and has the capability to address metrics needed to monitor project status and ensure required control including:

         1. Establishing appropriate buffers and buffer management reporting system

         2. Can distinguish between buffer management and buffer watching (i.e. correctly diagnose when a project is in jeopardy)

3. Project Management and the logistical solutions

   Objective: Demonstrates (a) understanding of the role and (b) sufficient capability to ensure the project management system successfully supports a Process of On-Going Improvement.

   1. Project Management and POOGI

      1. Knows the goals of the project function, and

      2. Knows how failure to meet its goals impacts the other entities in the system

      3. Understands the use of measures to align all levels of the organization with long term corporate goals

   2. Project Selection

      1. Can select projects from a holistic perspective (focused on improving the system’s constraint)

      2. Knows how to balance given market, research and development and finance issues and risk appropriately

   3. Portfolio Management

      1. Knows the appropriate reporting and metrics required to create a portfolio management decision making model to tie their tactics and investments to the organization’s short run and long run strategy.

      2. Knows the roles and information needs of the portfolio (pipeline) manager, master scheduler, and project vs. resource vs. task managers

   4. Can articulate sufficient contrasting details and issues associated with a subset of different project environments such as construction, engineer-to-order manufacturing, software development, high tech new product development, pharmaceutical product development, MRO, consulting projects.

   Resources

   2nd Edition CCPM Terms and Definitions