IT Project Management: The Role of Lean

Scenario: A particular software development project is underway, but progress is slow, even with the required resources on board. Technical issues are compounded by changing requirements, and planning is complicated by development resources getting pulled into support work on existing products. Quality has been compromised.

The problem described above is an example of what we view as a work process issue. This is in contrast to what we have called, in a companion paper (“IT Project Management: The Role of Governance”), a governance issue. The interaction between governance and the domain of work is depicted in the model shown in Figure 1.

When we look at issues that may emerge within the domain of work, as suggested in our example above, they often pertain to issues of efficiency and quality—that is, how well the work is being done. Because work can usually be structured in some way, the processes and procedures that enable this structure are important to identify, measure, and, quite often, improve upon. That is, without some deliberate attention to their improvement, there is no particular guarantee that they will operate efficiently, or that they will produce high-quality outcomes. The organization of project work around best practices provided within A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)—…