Building a Project‐driven Enterprise: How to Slash Waste and Boost Profits through Lean Project Management

Citation

Narasimhan, K. (2002), "Building a Project‐driven Enterprise: How to Slash Waste and Boost Profits through Lean Project Management", The TQM Magazine, Vol. 14 No. 6, pp. 376-377. https://doi.org/10.1108/tqmm.2002.14.6.376.1

Ronald Mascitelli is a project management professional and a certified management consultant and is the founder and president of Technology Perspectives. His expertise in this field has been used by a number of leading firms such as Boeing, Hughes Network Systems, and Raytheon, and the Department of Defense, NASA, and the Department of Energy, in the USA. Prior to this he had worked in Hughes Electronics as senior scientist and director of research and development.

He adopts a value‐based approach and, using real‐world examples, templates, and illustrations, describes breakthrough methods for eliminating waste from projects. The book comprises nine chapters grouped into four parts. Part I, comprising five chapters, deals with principles that drive project strategy. Part II entitled “The methods for lean project management” is a long chapter (166 pages) and comprises 12 methods for achieving “speed and efficiency”. Part III is a single chapter and deals with creating a lean product development process. The final part is about building a project‐driven enterprise and is covered in two chapters, one dealing with “Mandates for a project‐driven enterprise” and the other a brief description of the 11‐step process for slashing waste.

In chapter one, the author points out that in project work nearly 80 per cent of a typical workday can be consumed by non‐value‐added activities and enunciates five principles of lean thinking. He gives a working definition for project value and briefly explains how to discriminate between value‐added and non‐value‐added activities. To him value is anything for which a customer will gladly pay. In chapter two, he explains how to search for waste by concentrating on information flows and avoid withholding information from down‐stream activities. He briefly explains eight common examples of potentially avoidable delays such as “analysis paralysis”, “regular scheduled meetings” and “information hoarding”.

Minimizing transaction costs (that is, time and cost of moving information and materials from one individual to another) is the subject of chapter three. Suggests that shared language and the use of e‐mails can save a great deal of time and money. In chapter four, he turns his attention to explaining how the clever use of four levels of standardization (ranging from work methods to general work rules) can assist in saving considerable time and money. In the final chapter of part I dealing with concepts, he explains the power of brevity, managing risk, and exception management/team empowerment.

The 12 methods of lean project management covered in part II include: “testing for customer value”; “linking tasks to customer‐defined deliverables”; “the waste‐free design review”; “visual control and communications”; and “the value‐added scorecard”. At the outset in chapter six, Roland emphasizes that lean methods are not best practices, which are derived from benchmarking successful companies, and provides a table of a summary of the 12 methods and the countermeasures or solutions to specific problems that may be encountered. Then, each of the 12 problems is covered in some depth by providing a discussion of problems that could be encountered in implementing each method, solutions to those problems, and implementations steps, and how to measure success. The chapters end with a summary of what is covered. The discussions and solutions are supported with a number of visual aids.

Part III or chapter seven deals specifically with issues involved in product development projects. First he gives a broad‐brush overview of how lean methods can be applied and then explores four “facets” of new product development: leaning the overall process by continuous‐flow development, defining initial requirements by gathering early customer feedback, lean and efficient project management, and designing for lean manufacture. In part IV, the author provides some advice on how to optimize a project‐driven organization that supports and nurtures the 12 methods of lean project management.

A notable feature of a book written by a consultant is the list of 135 references provided. Also provided is a set of chapter‐by‐chapter notes. The book is well written and contains useful ideas for adoption by any manager, whether he is managing a project or not.