The use of lean practices like Kanban boards has become really popular in project management, especially those using agile methods. But what exactly is Lean project management ?
The application of lean manufacturing principles to project management can be roughly translated as lean project management. These principles were developed at Toyota, with the famous Toyota Production System employing kanban and the concepts of just-in-time (JIT) and “pull” to optimize flow and minimize inventory.
As with all lean concepts, lean project management is also concerned with reducing “waste”. We’ll look at the several categories of “waste” in a separate post, but let’s look at the key five principles behind lean project management.
- Specify “value” from the customer perspective - this is aligned with the agile concept of delivering “value” to the customer, but takes an outside-in approach to review the processes.
- Mapping the “value-stream” for each product - A “value-stream” is essentially all the activities and process for the creation of a product from concept to launch. This “outside-in” critical approach allows identifying which activities do not “add or enable value” and could be eliminated or minimized.
- Eliminate waste and make value flow - The next logical step in the process is to maximize work which adds value or enbles value while trying to eliminate or minimize non value-added work.
- Let the customer “pull” the value flow- Building on further elimination of inefficiencies e.g. reduction of inventory and just-in-time delivery, this step moves the process as close to the customer as possible. This is the part where Kanban boards come into play. Note that “pull” by itself is not sufficient to ensure smooth “flow”, unless the work-in-progress limits have been tweaked and tuned to minimize waste (delays, pile-ups, waits…)
- Continuous improvement - Based on the Japanese concept of “kaizen” or incremental improvements in the process which leads to much improved process over time. Implementing improvements across multiple sprint retrospectives is the conceptual parallel from the agile world.
As with many other industrial/manufacturing approaches adapted in an IT environment, lean practices are simple yet highly effective practical steps which can greatly improve delivery of projects as well as improve the product management process in the IT world.
References:
- Taiichi Ohno, the Toyota executive identified the first seven types of “muda” or waste/inefficiency.
- The five principles of “lean” as an antidote to “muda” were published in a book “Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation” by management analysts James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones.