Characteristics of Lean Project Management

Lean project management has several key characteristics. It relies on cross-functional teams that work in short iterations and uses an incremental approach to development. It focuses strongly on customer value and business priorities and strives for continuous improvement. These characteristics are the main differences to those of more traditional project management approaches. We will explain the main characteristic of lean project management in this article. read more ...

Weaknesses of the waterfall model

In classical project management, the project plan helps project managers execute and control the project’s phases. A project plan typically includes the costs, as well as the project’s scope and a schedule. Further, it defines milestones, activities, deliverables, and resources. read more ...

How Scrumban helps master complex systems

Scrumban encourages the user in the “Shu” phase to concentrate and master one thing at a time. Scrumban has the power to give a solid structure to fixed work in iterations. Thus, Scrumban could, on the one hand be used like Scrum. On the other hand, Scrumban gives both employees and customers the flexibility to pull the kind of work with high emergency and high customer value into the system without disturbing the cadence of an iteration or the self-organized work of planned items, which are planned at the beginning of an iteration. read more ...

The third principle of the Certified Lean Project Manager® – Continuous improvement

This principle of continuous improvement, also known as “kaizen”, is tied to perfecting the value stream. Kaizen requires everyone in an organization to improve and assess processes continually, with the aim of reducing waste. Another benefit is that it increases the value delivered to customers through incremental change. Production processes should be re-evaluated continually. This should also be done if a process appears to work well. There’s always room for improvement and a process is never perfect. read more ...

Certified Scrumban Practitioner® - The relationship between purpose and performance

The vision of a company or an institution should be clear and visible to everybody, especially for all members within the organization or the system. It should match the visions of each member of the Scrumban team. read more ...

Relation between Kaizen, Agility, and the Certified Scrumban Practitioner®

The agile setup is not a “big-bang” event. It is a continuous process which should be introduced carefully. There should be a constant improvement until certain a degree of maturity is achieved. But, as in the nature of all things, there is sometimes no progression or even small regressions. The “process driver” should not be faster than the whole organization. read more ...

Explaining the traditional project phases

If you are new to the field of project management, you may look for an easy way to structure your project management process. The traditional project phases shall help you to complete all tasks in the right sequence and at the right time.

Traditional project management can be described in terms of five key phases:
1. Initiating
2. Planning
3. Executing
4. Monitoring and Controlling
5. Closing

Each of these phases differs in specific ways from the corresponding agile phase. We will explain them in this article.

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The foundation of Scrumban

While Scrum is often more understood as an external process that is imposed upon workers, and Kanban is completely free and dependent on the elements people use in a Kanban system, Scrumban is a combination of the two. read more ...

The importance of transparency

In traditional project management, clients are seen as an abhorrence. After they’ve approved a project’s objective, defined scope, and acceptance criteria, the contact with the client is limited until the project closes. Changes from the client in the middle of the project are viewed as unwelcome interference. Even under the least favorable conditions, it could spell disaster. read more ...

The second principle of the Certified Lean Project Manager® – achieving flow in the value stream

One main benefit of lean project management is that your organization creates business processes that are effective and well suited to your organization or projects. For successful implementation, you’ll need to adjust yourself and your team for the transition mentally. This is because lean project management is more than a set of tools or a just a methodology. Rather, it is a mindset. Instead of prescribing exactly how you should manage a project, lean project management defines principles that you can interpret and implement to fit your needs. read more ...