Everything You Need to Know about Lean Project Management

Lean in project management, where the word ‘lean’ is associated with less wastage and more value addition. Lean is an Agile methodology that helps industries to improve productivity, increase customer value, eliminate problems, enhance the organization’s processes, reduce waste, and encourage continuous improvement. 

Historically, it was first introduced in the manufacturing industry, but today it is prevalent in almost every industry, including healthcare, education, software development, etc. Lean Six Sigma project management is one of the highly recommended SaaS solutions which concentrates on the improvement of people, purpose, and work processes.

What is Lean Project Management?  

Lean is defined as a management philosophy and a quality improvement process, according to the Project Management Institute (PMI). The primary objective of Lean is to eradicate waste, improve production time and quality, and mitigate costs. It is a process in which unproductive tasks, unrequired documentation, unwanted meetings, over-planning, and detailed requirements are eliminated. Lean project management methodology has added value to other processes like Agile, Kanban, and Scrum. You must enroll in Project Management courses online to learn more about the lean project management framework.

These non-productive wastes that are generated in any industry have been categorized into:

• Muda (waste) – Processes that don’t add value
• Mura (unevenness) – Processes that are inconsistent and uneven
• Muri (overburden) – Processes that lead to unnecessary burden or stress

The History of the Lean Model 

Lean Methodology was first introduced by Japanese engineers, between 1948 and 1975, at Toyota Production System (TPS), to improve manufacturing, eliminate waste, and enhance interactions with stakeholders. The lean project management principles of the ideology were outlined by Dr. Jeffrey K. Liker in his book “The Toyota Way,” which was all about how industries can eliminate corporate waste. 

In 1988 John Krafcik introduced the project management lean approach through an article that he wrote for his master’s thesis at MIT Sloan School of Management, “Triumph of the Lean Production System.” This led to the best-selling book, “The Machine That Changed the World.” This is how other industries adopted and implemented the method to eradicate waste.

What are the Core Principles of Lean Project Management?  

The Core Principles of Lean Project Management are:

1. Identify Value 

You must first understand your stakeholders (leaders and consumers) to identify your product value. Then you must create products and services, improve internal operations, make them valuable, or make a consumer’s life easier.

2. Map Value Stream  

A visual tool known as Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is about diagramming your current and ideal workflow, including the entire project line from initiation to completion. Then both the workflows should be compared to identify types of wastes such as:

• Overproduction (Unnecessary features
• Inventory (Mismanaged backlog) 
• Motion and Project Productivity (Task switching) 
• Defects, Omissions, or Errors (Technical debt) 
• Over-processing (Expensive tools) 
• Waiting-time waste, Transport waste, and Fragmented teams

With the help of VSM, you can visualize flaws in the project life cycle and enhance final product quality for both internal and external stakeholders. 

3. Create a Flow  

After completing steps 1 and 2, it is time to rework your project management plan, reconfigure steps, break down every stage of progress, and remove waste. This lean project management framework helps to ensure that while the project develops, there is no delayed timeline, mismanaged backlog, or unnecessarily wasted resources which can hamper the effectiveness of the project. This stage also implies open communication with team members so everyone is on the same page when preventing future inefficiencies.

4. Establish a Pull  

Establishing pull means keeping your workflow progressing efficiently. This means pulling work from the completed stage and moving on to the next step. Lean project management examples for establishing a pull are when a software coder finishes his task which is ready for a review, he will flag it, after which the reviewer takes it up. He will further flag it after he is done with his job, and then the following process head takes over for testing. This is how the project successfully moves from one stage to another, which finally helps industries produce the inventory their customers need. 

5. Continue to Improve 

Lean Project Management is all about striving for perfection. You can get better with each project, ensuring continuous improvements and meeting all stakeholders' transforming and trending demands. It is a seamless and productive workflow analysis to be the best resource with zero waste.

Benefits of Lean Project Management 

Lean Project Management is all about reducing lead times, lowering inventory and storage costs, improving productivity, quality, and efficiency, and creating higher customer satisfaction. There are several lean project management advantages and disadvantages, but here are some of the key benefits of employing it within your organization:

1. Cost reduction

Organizations can control and reduce costs using lean six sigma project management, thus maximizing profits. It is imperative to eliminate money-consuming waste, such as unnecessary stationery, transportation costs, etc., which maximizes savings and profits.

2. Enhanced Customer Experience

One of the key ideologies of applying a lean approach to project management is to enhance communication and work from the customer’s perspective. The whole idea is to provide according to the consumer's needs and eventually reduce waste. 

3. Establishing an effective “Push and Pull” system

This helps in prioritizing tasks and reducing overproduction. It is all about following each process diligently, and ordering only what you need, instead of piling up inventory.

4. Enhanced Quality and Constant Improvement

The Lean methodology ultimately optimizes processes, saves time and money, and works on daily improvements. The whole idea is to add value and reduce waste.

5. High Employee Morale

Lean six sigma project management helps employees to make the right decisions, communicate better, coordinate effectively, and improve the quality of their work. It also helps to create knowledge, brush existing skills, deliver on time, and optimize the whole process.

6. Deliver Fast

The objective is to deliver high-quality products to customers as fast as possible and remove tasks that slow the process down. 

How Does Lean Project Management Work? 

Lean Project Management works on the five core principles and is applied to almost every industry to improve product value by streamlining processes. Online PMP certification programs help you learn about the process and features of the lean method of project management. Following the principles, project leaders and managers lay down a project cycle that:

• Improves the project through innovation and creativity,
• Reduces physical waste and waiting times, 
• Enhances customer service,
• Improves quality and inventory management.

Project managers map the process value stream and establish the pull-based flow. Then they note improvements required in the project and act accordingly to ensure constant growth and optimization. The steps they follow are:

• Step 1: Focus on value - as defined by your customer.
• Step 2: Visualize the value stream.
• Step 3: Increase process throughput.
• Step 4: Transform from push to pull services.
• Step 5: Improve continuously.

Lean Project Management Tools  

Prince2 foundation and practitioner training is a must for getting savvy at some of the latest lean project management tools. Some of the most important Lean Project Management tools that you can use are:

1. Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Cycle - A continuous cycle of planning, processing, and testing improvement measures on a smaller scale.
2. Kaizen – A Japanese word that means continuous improvement 
3. Kanban – Helps to plan, track and manage any project from start to finish. It helps project managers easily assign and prioritize tasks, share files, and monitor what team members are doing 
4. Deming cycle (PDCA) – Introduced by Dr. W. Edwards Deming in the 1950s is all about investigating your workflow, finding solutions to the problem, monitoring whether your solutions are effective, and applying revised solutions 
5. Lean Six Sigma Project Management Methodology (DMEDI) – This helps identify problems in your workflow and incorporates defining your project goals, measuring success, exploring innovating means, developing a fool-proof project plan, and finally implementing it.
6. Other Important Lean Project Management Tools:

• Value stream mapping
• Customer feedback surveys
• Gantt charts or bar graphs to visualize project milestones.
• Root cause analysis (RCA)

Traditional vs Lean Project Management Process 

Lean project management principles have been transformed and evolved since the waterfall method was introduced in Lean manufacturing years ago. In 2003, the latest principles were published by Mary and Tom Poppendieck in their research “Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit.”

Today, the lean project management approach follows Deming’s change cycle and is based on an iterative process. Instead of following all activities at once according to traditional project management, the modern version of Lean Project Management seeks to bring value to customers quickly and continuously. 

New technologies and techniques, such as pulling the deliverables and matching their processing, have been introduced and followed to ensure 100% task success and maximum waste reduction.

Conclusion  

Improve your workflow, produce high-quality products, and convert your target audience into consumers with Lean Project Management. With KnowledgeHut project management certification preparation, you can get a clearer picture of this cleaning-up ideology that aids in process improvements and streamlined processes.  Incorporating lean can help you visualize your project better, communicate with team members, and meet customer requirements. For a successful company, you must apply the lean method of project management and achieve shorter lead times, reduce cost, improve customer satisfaction, and carve out process inefficiencies. Its reliability on its five solid principles reduces the overall cost of your company and eventually leads to better profitability and higher ROI.