Larry, All-

The one thing in this conversation that trips me up is "task buffer." What
is this thing you speak of?

I can confirm for Concerto that normal operation does not re-calculate the
critical chain. If a feeding chain has become the longest penetrating
chain, that means that the feeding chain has eaten its entire feeding buffer
and is moving slower than the critical chain. Thus tasks on that chain get
a priority signal for the project in question. That said, "% complete" of
the project is always based on the original critical chain length,
regardless of the length of the current penetrating chain.

That said, I believe Concerto does still watch for resource contention
within a single project as it runs buffer management. i.e. If a chain that
uses resource X is running late, then another chain using resource X (later)
will also start running late when they begin to conflict. But the whole
point of the buffer priority mechanisms is to highlight this and drive
action.

It is interesting that Larry has decided that a task doesn't get credit for
contributing to %complete until the task is completed. I guess this would
prevent execution-level confusion as to which tasks have priority and
maintains focus.

I think the "consume feeding buffers" option is dangerous in Concerto for
the same reason that Skip mentioned. However, the same effect is felt when
you activate the project with a due date shorter than it recommends:
concerto will attempt to "squeeze" the project, particularly on feeding
chains that are longer than the CC due to buffer consumption.

Regards,

Jack Vinson