Lean Project Management

Identifying, measuring and minimizing waste in projects

What do we mean by 'Lean Project Management'?

There are more than enough definitions and studies on the success or failure of projects.

However, what often remains "under the radar" in this discussion of "project success" are hidden factors of failure that only have an indirect impact on the ultimate success of the project. These are often not immediately and indisputably visible, but merely "annoying" – unless one has already unconsciously accepted them as a natural (and unavoidable?) part of "everyday practice".

In the tradition of lean thinking, we refer to these hidden factors for failure as "waste". This refers to all actions and events in a project that do not make a direct or at least indirect contribution to the creation of the project result and can therefore be and must be eliminated without loss.

Lean project management means initially avoiding or subsequently reducing non-value-adding activities in projects.

What are typical wastes in projects?

Typical types of waste in projects includes:

  • Waiting: Waiting for decisions "from above", for deliveries or information from other organisational interfaces.
  • Overprocessing: Unnecessary internal or external requirements, "gilding" the project results, or too much information and communication, e.g. due to unclear requirements.
  • Defects: Uncertainty about what constitutes a "deect", ignoring defects or working on the basis of incorrect information, which ultimately requires time-consuming rework.
  • Misallocation: Insufficient capacity in quantitative terms (human, financial or physical resources) or qualitative terms (skills in terms of knowledge, abilities, motives and attitudes).
  • Misdirection: Unclear project purpose and benefits, unclear and constantly changing priorities within the project, or unclear responsibilities, leading to numerous fruitless shifts in responsibility, discussions and "not in my backyard" behaviour.
  • Unnecessary movement: unnecessary travel and travel time for face-to-face meetings, superfluous changes to project results, processes or organisation, chronic multitasking and task switching.
  • Underprocessing: Superficial completion of tasks, inadequate documentation, insufficient communication.

How can waste in projects be measured?

The indicator we have developed to quantify the extent of waste is the Project Management Waste Index (PMWI). This is comparable to the Body Mass Index (BMI). Like the BMI, the PMWI assumes that "zero waste" is neither the ideal state nor realistically achievable. Rather, the ideal and realistic goal is to minimise waste in projects as much as possible. 

The PMWI is collected through a standardised survey of participants and stakeholders in projects on the frequency and impact of certain phenomena of waste in projects. The 7 x 3 = 21 items are rated on a Likert scale from 0 (= does not occur / no impact) to 4 (occurs continuously / massive impact).

The PMWI can then be calculated as follows:

How much waste is there in projects?

In 2021, we conducted a PMWI survey of N=270 project managers in German-speaking countries in various industries (primarily IT, mechanical engineering, automotive) and for different types of projects (product development projects, internal organisational development projects, etc.). Of these, N=202 responses were usable.

The mean value of waste across all participants was PMWI = 25.1% (median: 24.0%). This means that, in terms of the maximum possible waste, the projects exhibited around a quarter of it in average..  

It is interesting to note that there is a high correlation between PMWI on the one hand and classic project success factors, in particular adherence to deadlines and budgets, on the other.

The most common and serious types of waste that respondents perceived in their projects are waiting (for decisions, deliveries and information), misallocation (lack of personnel capacity and skills, lack of budgets) and underprocessing (superficial processing, inadequate documentation, inadequate communication). 
 
 
The study, however, did not answer the question for the root causes of these types of waste. The answer to this question requires individual investigation in each organisation, as the causes can vary significantly.
 

How can waste be reduced in your projects?

Reducing waste in projects requires an approach tailored to the individual project or organisation.

This takes place in three steps:

1. Following a preliminary discussion about the scope and participants in the project, the PMWI and the top types of waste are first identified. The results are the quantitative PMWI across all projects and the most frequent and serious types of waste.

2. Subsequently, the results of the survey are reported back in a one-day workshop and the main causes of the top three types of waste are identified. The result is a jointly accepted prioritised list of the types of waste in an organisation.

3. At the end of the one-day workshop, a prioritised list of measures, responsible parties and performance indicators will be drawn up in order to minimise the most significant causes of waste. This list will be worked through and the success of the measures will be measured and evaluated.

In this way, a German mechanical engineering company has succeeded in identifying and prioritising causes of waste such as "too many projects running in parallel", "chronic best-case planning", "frequent project launches without the necessary prerequisites", "silo thinking between departments" and "small-scale division of labour between too many different departments", and addressing them effectively through measures.

When can waste be reduced in your projects?

The PMWI approach to identifying and reducing waste in projects has four key advantages:

  • it can be used for all types of projects, including customer- and market-related product development and consulting projects, as well as internal organisational development and IT projects.
  • it is open to all process models: plan-driven (or "classic"), agile and hybrid process models.
  • it can be used in every phase of a project, but is most effective before the project starts, because this is when there is the greatest scope for design and waste can be avoided from the outset.
  • it can be applied to individual projects as well as to an organisational project portfolio. In the latter case, it is used to optimise organisational project management processes. 

In all four cases, the most important factor is the serious commitment of those responsible for the project and organisation, not only to measure but also to change.