Lean project management eliminates wastes such as “excessive documentation,

excessive planning and control, unproductive meetings, avoidable rework,

excessive definition of detailed requirements, unproductive multitasking

What is the purpose of eliminating waste?

Optimizing processes to eliminate waste is crucial for the success of your
company. Having wasteful activities can lower profitability, increase customer
costs, decrease quality, and even employee satisfaction.
The benefit Tangible benefits include: reduced lead time for orders, reduced costs,
improved quality, inventory reductions, increased productivity, and work space
utilization.

The main idea of “lean production” is about highlighting the things that add value
by reducing everything else (waste).
As a proven consequence, when you eliminate waste, the quality of products
improves, while production time and costs are reduced

What are the “7 wastes of lean”?

Before we go into the 7 wastes of lean, let’s revise the importance of understanding
waste vs. value.

The biggest waste of time, money, energy, passion, and life skills is building or
doing something that nobody wants or appreciates.

In business, customers vote how much they value products and services with their
money. Building the right things is a prerequisite for business success. That’s not
part of lean production deals with, but rather the lean startup concept.
Next to that, when you know what to offer to the market (doing the right things),
you want to be as efficient as possible in doing that (doing things right).

Efficiency is about achieving peak performance, where we use the least amount of
inputs to achieve the highest output. To minimize inputs, all waste must be
eliminated.

In terms of production efficiency, there are seven types of waste:

Using a good time & attendance system and project time tracker and similar
technologies supporting business processes can greatly help to reduce different
types of waste listed above, especially those that are connected to time waste.

Wasting time is one of the biggest wastes there is.

And now let’s look systematically at each one, as well as some ideas on how to
eliminate waste and achieve the maximum possible efficiency in the process of
production.

1. Transportation – Don’t unnecessarily move products or materials

Unnecessary transportation is an obvious waste which is easy to notice.
Transportation is defined for this purpose as the movement of products or materials
from one location to other, the obvious thing being that transportation adds no
value to the product.
In lean production, what we consider a transportation waste is when we are moving
products that don't need to undergo any processing. In addition to producing waste,
every time a product is transported, it is at risk of being damaged, lost or delayed.
The longer the product moves around, the longer it goes without any value being
added to it. Handling of the products is also part of transportation waste.
Transportation waste is most often caused by:
1. Having several production or storage locations
2. Poorly laid out production lines
3. Overly-complex production processes
4. Large batch sizes
The solution: you have to minimize all transportation in the production process and
avoid any unnecessary steps between any two processes. There must be a good
flow between the processes, and strict limitation of work in progress.

2. Inventory – All the access products and material that are not being processed
Inventory or inventories are all the components, works in process, and finished
products not being processed. Every piece of raw material, all finished goods, and
every other item not being sold is actually a cost for a company.
Additionally, inventory is a cost because it has to be stored, and transported, and
sometimes needs packaging. It can also be damaged.
Inventory waste might also be cash not used to generate income, space not
completely utilized, paperwork which is unnecessarily stored, etc.
The most frequent cause of excessive inventory is:
1. Overproduction of goods
2. Overspending on inputs
3. Inventory defects
The solution: Don’t store any extra inventory. Make purchases only when needed
and in quantities that are actually required.

3. Motion - All movement of equipment not done in the easiest possible way
The waste of motion includes all movements that are not done as simply as
possible. It’s similar to the transportation of products, but movement refers to the
motion of equipment and operators. We are talking here about people or
equipment moving or walking more than is required to perform processing.
All excessive motion represents big stress. In business, there is a saying that even
machines wear out. You want to save as much energy and resources as possible,
even at the micro level.

Examples of motion waste in business are:

1. Non-ergonomic office layouts
2. Walking to deliver paperwork
3. Searching for things
4. Lifting heavy things etc.
Motion waste usually disrupts the workflow and delays the start of work.
The solution: A good way to reduce motion is to follow the 5S system of
organizing a workplace.

Try to simplify and optimize all motion in the production line, placing equipment
nearby, providing an ergonomic workspace, and implementing visual signals so
things are easy to find.

4. Waiting – idle production time where processes are not optimally synchronized
Waiting, also known as queuing, is another type of waste. It simply means waiting
for the next production step or dealing with interruptions of production during a
shift change.

When two interdependent processes are not synchronized, idle time is produced,
and we have waiting waste. An example of this is waiting for an answer from
another department so you can take action, system downtime, or waiting for shared
equipment.

Waiting is most often caused by:

Poor process planning or layouts
Idle equipment or unplanned downtimes
Bottle necks
The solution: Optimize and connect all processes in such a way that the waiting
time is minimized, and no time is wasted. The work should be standardized and
proper production takt time introduced.

5. Overprocessing – Investing more into a product than customer values

Overprocessing means putting more into a product than is valued by the customer.
The goal is to do only the level of processing that matches usefulness and
necessity.
Similar to motion, this type of waste is very hard to notice and eliminate in
business.

An example of overprocessing in production is painting unseen areas. Machines

that are overprocessing because the whole process flow is directed through them
are also an example of this kind of waste.

In lean, small is beautiful. Overprocessing can also be a result of unnecessary

production steps, using older, outdated methods, or not having standard work
plans. It can also be caused by slow approval process.

Overprocessing is most often caused by:

1. Unnecessary production steps
2. Using outdated methods
3. A Lack of standardization
4. Slow approval process
The solution is to match the level of processing to what the customer wants and is
willing to pay for. Don’t do more, and avoid perfectionism in this regard, rather
always have the customer in mind before you start to work on any task.
6. Overproduction – the waste of making too much too soon
The sixth type of waste is overproduction, which means producing more, faster
than needed, or “making too much too soon”. It’s the worst of the 7 since it also
leads to other kinds of waste and devalues the need for constant improvement.
Overproduction leads to excess inventory, simply because it is production ahead of
demand. Overproduction is usually based on the “just in case” mindset.
Many people think that inventory is an asset and has value, but in reality the value
is very low or doesn’t even exist.

The most frequent causes of overproduction are:

1. Poor forecasts of market demand
2. Unpredictable production schedules
3. Lack of automation or poor automation
4. Long setup times for production
The solution: Switch from the “just in case” mindset to “just in time” production,
by considering the overall takt time of a production line.

7. Defects – mistakes and errors that take time to fix

And finally we come to the last and most obvious type of waste – defects.
Every defected item requires repair or replacement, creates additional paperwork,
and wastes resources, materials, and time. It can often also lead to loss of
customers.

Most often defects are caused by:

1. A Lack of standardization
2. Inadequate quality control
3. Insufficient machinery repair
4. Poor communication
Human errors
It’s better to prevent defects than try to detect them. Examples of defect waste in
business are missing information, errors, and client complaints.
The effort accompanying this type of waste consists of inspecting for defects,
avoiding mistakes, and fixing defects as fast as possible. Standardizing all work
and performing regular detection of abnormalities is the way to go.

Other types of waste

Lean production is primarily directed at removing waste in production factories.
But you can quickly find the “synonyms” for every type of waste in any kind of
business, even in purely service-based industries.

No business is immune to waste.

For example, in a service-based industry the following could be considered an

equivalent to each of the 7 wastes:

Transportation: multitasking, going on unnecessary business trips …

Inventory: undelivered articles, code, any other type of output, tools that nobody
uses …
Motion: unnecessary meetings, looking for things in a messy office …
Waiting: waiting for meetings to start, waiting for other coworkers to deliver,
waiting for approvals …
Over processing: complex solutions to simple problems, doing things manually
that can be automated …
Over production: production articles, code, services that nobody is willing to pay
for …
Defects: bugs, spelling errors, …
And still we are not done yet with the different types of waste. Based on the seven
types of waste in TPS, other authors have added a few additional ones:

Underutilization
Underutilization is a waste of talent, and it means failing to make use of the people
within an organization. People are the greatest assets by far, and their
underutilization is the greatest waste possible. Every manager should strive
towards developing and applying the company’s talents in order to provide as
much value as possible for the markets. Make sure you fully utilize your people
with a good project time tracker with powerful time use visualization.

Waste of resources and materials

Waste of resources and materials in business is the failure to make efficient use of
electricity, gas, water, and other resources. A waste of resources doesn’t only cost
a lot of money, but also has many other downsides, such as negatively affecting the
environment and society as a whole.

And just to list a few more:

1. Delays
2. Duplication
3. Unclear communication
4. Lack of information
5. Lost opportunities
6. Equipment breakdowns etc.

Easy steps to eliminate all 7 wastes of lean

There are five steps to eliminating every type of waste, which are:
 1. See it: Make waste visible
2. Recognize it: Be conscious of waste
3. Define who is responsible: Be accountable for waste
4. Define the size and magnitude: Measure the waste
5. Eliminate or reduce the waste
First you have to know what is causing waste. If you have read this blog post this
far, you are well aware of the things which are potentially causing waste at your
organization. Now you have to specifically identify the biggest waste that is
draining your resources and find out what type it is. After that you have to decide if
it’s only you who is responsible for the waste, or if it also affects other
stakeholders in the business. You, of course, have to involve all the affected
stakeholders in the process of removing waste.
It’s good to measure the waste, to clearly see the price you are paying, and
determine the priority and difficulty of eliminating it.
It sounds easier than it is, but when you see the benefits of eliminating waste you
get the motivation to do it more and more. Eliminating waste is also part of the
Kaizen philosophy in lean production.
Kaizen is a competitive strategy in which all employees work together to create a
strong culture of constant improvement, and part of becoming better and better is
improving efficiency and eliminating all waste. So, happy cleaning.
One of the core lean principles, also applied in agile context, is “amplify
learning”. ... “Learning a new skill” means getting at the point where you use
that skill even when under pressure.

Some tools that are easy to get started with are Backchannelchat, Padlet, YO teach!
Each of these promote asynchronous as well as synchronous conversations and are
good for promoting communication during the learning process

What does it mean to amplify learning?

In a software development project, amplify learning is the process by which we
increase the ability of the development team to learn quickly and effectively.
So Amplify Learning means "to increase the ability of a team to learn quickly and
effectively." And when we say learn we mean learning about the user needs.
How do you increase feedback in the principle amplify learning?
An essential component of learning is feedback. Learning and feedback can be
amplified in several ways. Provide opportunities for learning through books,
training courses, coaching, deliberate exposure to diverse work, and deliberate
experimentation.13 May 2005.

Learning is the result of both encountering new experiences and deliberate

experimentation. Learning creates new knowledge, increased volition and
improved action. Learning and feedback can be amplified rapidly, but an
empowered team is necessary to effectively take advantage of this amplification. If
a team is not empowered, then rapid learning can lead to frustration. Amplified
learning and feedback result in excitement, enthusiasm and playfulness, rapid
problem solving, high quality work results and satisfied stakeholders.

As project managers we are paid to make decisions. When our decision-making

ability is impeded we can slow things down causing delays, frustration, and
customer dissatisfaction. But what does a project manager need to make better and
faster decisions?
The author identified three things that a project manager needs in order to
make better, faster project decisions. These are:
1. Accurate information, at frequent intervals, from reliable sources-
a) What happened in the past. The author is not referring to lessons
learned from previous projects; rather, he is referring to the past on a
current project. Project managers spend a lot of time in the past on
projects, probably more than they should. Every project report that a
project manager reads is similar to reading a history book. The
questions is, is it recent or ancient history? The key is how “old” is
that information and how useful is it to help us predict the future?
b) What's happening in the present. Although project managers spend all
their waking and sleeping moments in the present, oftentimes they
give it short shrift when it comes to managing projects. It's the
present, not the past, which governs our project's future. It's what the
project manager and his or her team are doing right now that will
dictate tomorrow's results. Ask yourself this question: What is your
team doing right now as you are reading this paper?
c) What might happen in the future. On projects, everyone is obsessed
with the future: you, your team, the boss, and the client. Everyone
wants to know when will the project be done? How will it work?
There's a lot of anticipation. Yet, we are oftentimes poorly equipped
to tell them. We hedge our bets all the time, and we do so because we
don't regularly employ a good tool kit of techniques to help us do the
hard work of predicting the future.

2. A willingness to make decisions under uncertain conditions- Some

people can have a great deal of high-quality information, yet still struggle to
make a decision. What we see at work in such instances is called the
organizational uncertainty principle. This says that the faster your decision-
making cycle is, the less assurance you have that you're making the right
decisions. However, if you strive for low uncertainty, you will take longer to
make decisions. Accordingly, you've got to reach a balance; unfortunately,
some project managers find that difficult to do.

Step 1: Define the problem. Are you certain you have articulated the right
problem to solve?
 Step 2: Frame the decision. You need to ask who-

is impacted?
needs to provide input?
should be part of the discussion?
should make and review the decision?
Step 3: Implement the decision. You need to ask: “Who needs to know? Are
the people identified for implementing the decision capable of doing so?
How long will it take?”

Step 4: Monitor the results. Once the decision has been implemented, you
have to monitor the situation to see that the implementation was successful.

You can see that decision-making encompasses more than just formulating a
decision.

3. A project governance structure that pushes decision making down to

the lowest possible level Following is a description of each of these areas
The sad fact of life is that we all have bosses and we have some structure in
which we do our job. And, it's this structure and how it's implemented that
can help or hinder our ability to make better, faster decisions.