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.

The third principle – Continuous improvement

Keep in mind that developing a mindset for lean project management is the most important discipline, even more important than following the actual mechanics of specific practices in lean project management. We should figure out how to embrace and adjust the different lean standards in a way that suits our enterprise standards.

One of the core aspects of lean project management depends on the active involvement of the customer throughout the development process. It is important the team members in lean project management are highly motivated to sustain the required level of adaptability and collaboration. Considering this you can implement the lean project management principle of continuous improvement. Because stakeholder participation is critical to the success of agile implementation, it’s especially important to obtain their full support.

Discourages continuous improvement
By nature, continuous improvements can’t be planned beforehand.
This is because they result from adaptation. Team members review results or current practices and then identify ways to improve and implement them. The result is the traditional approach is plan-based and sequential. It discourages continuous improvement and instead focuses on sticking to plans. These are the theoretical reasons for the change. We should give our stakeholders specific and concrete examples of how a traditional project management approach negatively affects their organization.

Learn how to use Continuous improvement and build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right from the first. Enroll in the Certified Lean Project Manager®