Theory of Constraints Handbook - James Cox Iii [97]
How does the project environment use the five areas identified by Womack and Jones (1996) as the key principles of Lean to ensure improvement would be ongoing? The five are:
1. Specify value from the standpoint of the end customer.
2. Identify all the steps in the value stream.
3. Make the value-creating steps flow toward the customer.
4. Let customers pull value from the next upstream activity.
5. Pursue perfection.
The Five Principles of Lean Applied to the Project Environment
Specifying Value
How do we specify value in projects? Lean principles start with an attempt to define value in terms of specific products with specific capabilities offered at specific prices through a dialogue with customers. Taking the time to define the project value will alleviate some common problems found in the project environment, such as project definition being too vague, lack of stakeholder support/participation, scheduling without really knowing the true scope, and scope creep. A simple technique for specifying value revolves around answering some key questions. Who is the customer of this project? Is there more than one? Is our own organization also requiring value from this project? Is the objective and scope sufficient to solve each of the project’s customers’ problems so that we will not have to expand or redo the project? This means we must first establish the problem statements for each customer and only then specify what we must deliver to solve that problem and create value.
Identify Steps in the Value Stream
Once we have defined the value from the standpoint of the end customer, we must identify all the steps in the value stream: the project structure of arrows, tasks, and resources that create that value. To ensure each task, relationship, and resource is not wasted, we can use some guiding questions. Is each task and path dependency necessary to achieve the customer objective? Is it creating value? If a task is not creating value, is it necessary for satisfying a boundary condition of the project (e.g., may not use outside contractors on constructing competition-sensitive operating equipment)? Does this task meet the correct exit criteria to provide the correct input for its successor task?
Make Value-Creating Steps Flow towards the Customer
As we plan the project, we need to ensure that the value-creating steps flow towards the customer and that the project deliverables solve each customer’s problems. We should ask whether this task dependency is necessary to ensure we do it right the first time (or to minimize iteration variability) and is it worth the time investment of waiting for the predecessor task to complete? Is the investment of this type of resource (high-level skill) in this task appropriate for the investment of the loss of the critical resource being tied up? As the value stream is mapped, what we call the project network, hopefully most of the steps will be found to create value. Additional steps may be listed and not add value to the product or service. Those steps that create no value and that should be eliminated are called Muda or Waste.
How do we decide if we have the correct tasks and the correct dependencies between tasks? The answer can be summarized as the correct tasks and arrow dependencies are those that are necessary to deliver the project scope and support their successor tasks to enable speed and quality. Do we have all the tasks that create value? It is important in projects not only to ensure that we only have tasks and arrows that are needed to create value, but also that we have no omissions of tasks that are needed to deliver full value.
Let Customers Pull Value from the Next Upstream Activity
In executing projects, we must execute in a way that lets each task’s customer (successor task, deliverable) pull value from the previous upstream activity. As a project schedule is followed, it must be