Lean Into Savings

  Agile   Governance   Manufacturing   Risk Management   PM Network  

Lean practices have been working miracles in manufacturing for decades, driving early adopters—most notably Toyota—to the top of their markets. Given that track record, lean processes are now cropping up in project management across industries.

Organizations that apply lean principles to their program management practices are able to identify and weed out processes and activities that introduce wasteful spending. In a world of big-budget programs, such improvements can yield huge bottom-line benefits.

“Applying lean principles to program management drives greater efficiencies and value to the customer and the organization,” says Kambiz Moghaddam, Ed.D., program lean execution leader for Boeing Defense, Space & Security, Long Beach, California, USA. “It’s about identifying opportunities and execution, which results in improving the quality, productivity and efficiency.”

The Guide to Lean Enablers for Managing Engineering Programs, released in 2012 by PMI, the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), outlined key challenges programs face and offered up approximately 300 best practices in 40 categories that effective teams and organizations use to overcome these issues.

“Application of lean enablers is designed to reduce and/or eliminate waste,&…

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