LEAN SIX SIGMA PROJECT TYPES

LEAN SIX SIGMA PART…. 9 MARATHON STUDY

In my last article, I talked about RISK MANAGEMENT IN LEAN ENTERPRISES”

Please read along as we attain another height in PART..9..

We progress by looking at

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LEAN SIX SIGMA PROJECT TYPES

The core ideas of Lean Project Management have already been used in different domains:

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LEAN CONSTRUCTION:

In construction projects in particular, the integration of lean principles into project management has been considered for some time .

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Lean Product / Lean Software Development

Since the 1980s, there have been a number of approaches to "lean product development" and "lean software development", the importance of which has increased significantly due to the increasing proportion of software in products.

Each life cycle stage raises new questions about the success of the initial, making-stage project

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Lean Innovation / Lean Startup

In more recent times and inspired by the spread of agile approaches in product development, there is also increasing talk of "lean innovation" and "lean startups" and approaches to lean and agile innovation management are proposed.

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How Does Lean Project Management Work?

The introduction of Lean Project Management in the company or in the project world is not an easy task. In contrast to standardized project management, the following factors represent a hurdle during implementation:

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Lean Project Management is not a project management tool that can be standardized in such a way that it can be used in all types of projects without adaptation. Lean Project Management cannot be designed according to the “one size fits all” principle . The characteristics of Lean Project Management in the sample products Lean Product Development and Scrum make this clear:

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Anyone who expects Lean Project Management checklists and predefined tools has not understood Lean Management . These “tools” are only a means to an end and are tailored to the respective task as required.

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What is essential is the Lean philosophy, which is the real value of Lean Project Management. The core elements are dealing with problems and errors, the focus on the value of the project result, avoiding the waste of resources and time through activities that do not add value, the flexible reaction to changes in the project environment during the project period and a convincing project vision.

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Establishing a Lean Project Management culture is a task that takes on a period of time that can span several years and only makes sense where project teams work together with the appropriate continuity. This is typically the case in corporate product development and software development.

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Product life cycle can ultimately include recycling portions of the product

A tailored change management (For this task, change management ) required.

If these hurdles are successfully overcome, projects can be carried out more successfully in terms of project budget, duration and quality of results.

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Agile: Fast Feedback in Living Order

Lean was originally developed in the world of manufacturing but has been adopted in many industries. In the world of software development, a related approach, Agile, has become increasingly popular. Agile software development projects typically involve small, self-organizing teams who work collaboratively in short iterative cycles to produce working product increments. When you hear people talking about Agile, they may be referring generally to a set of values and principles intended to guide project teams in “achieving agility” by continuously adapting and improving the way they work. However, people often use the term Agile to refer to one of the many specific software development frameworks based on those values and principles, including the following.

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The many flavors of Agile include:

??? Scrum: Designed for completing complex projects using small, cross-functional, self-organizing teams, Scrum is the most widely used form of Agile. When people refer to “Agile software development,” they are usually talking about Scrum practices, and we often do the same in this ebook.

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?? Kanban: Based on Lean principles, Kanban focuses on incremental change and continuous process improvement. Central to this simple framework is the Kanban board, which is a visual display of all the project work in progress, the work waiting to be started, and the work already completed.

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?? Extreme Programming (XP): Emphasizing short development cycles with frequent releases of software for evaluation, XP is based on a set of software development best practices.

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? Crystal, Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), and Feature-Driven Development (FDD): These are some of the other more popular Agile frameworks.

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Most Agile approaches emphasize an iterative approach to product development, with the project specifications evolving along with the customer’s notion of the software requirements. According to project manager Steve Caseley, in a Microsoft Growth Center article,

?projects using these iterative development approaches “plan, develop, and implement project functionality in small chunks (or iterations). The key to successful iterative delivery is that each small chunk effectively operates as a smaller mini-project under the umbrella of the total project” (Caseley 2019).

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A Scrum project starts with a conversation between the development team and the product owner about what the customer wants the software to do. In Scrum terminology, the customer is the product owner, and the features that the product owner wants included in the software are known as user stories, which may be expressed in simple, nontechnical language from the perspective of the person who wants that feature—for example, “As a car owner, I want to schedule my service appointment online so that I don’t have to spend time on the phone calling my mechanic.” Often, the person is a fictional persona representing a type of user or stakeholder.

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The product owner prioritizes the user stories, which are collectively referred to as the product backlog, and in each development cycle, the team creates pieces of software that address one or more user stories. After a one- to two-week cycle of development (known in Scrum as a sprint) the team presents the new software to the product owner in a sprint review meeting so she can try it out and make suggestions for improvement.

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The team then begins another sprint, incorporating those suggestions into a new iteration and beginning work on new user stories, depending on their capacity. After every sprint, the product owner has the chance to redirect the team to new user stories, or to revise the team’s understanding of an existing user story. Through these repeated interactions, which provide fast, focused feedback, the team and the product owner zero in on a software application that does what the product owner needs it to do. If time and money are tight, as they often are, the product owner has regular opportunities to make choices about which user stories are the most important, and which can be dispensed with if necessary.

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Agile development is essentially a learning process through which the development team and the product owner create a shared understanding of how many features they can create, given the allotted time and money. It’s very much a living order approach to project management, in that the early stages involve some ambiguity and many unknowns. According to Robert Merrill, a Senior Business Analyst at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an Agile coach, “Agile is a way to manage projects in the face of unpredictability and constraints—often very rigid time and budget constraints. The fast feedback allows the team to create the best possible software within the given constraints” (2017).

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Although Agile had its roots in software development, companies have also expanded its use into a variety of project types, including manufacturing, product development, capital projects, and service projects. For one perspective on how an iterative, Agile approach can help manufacturing companies take advantage of new technologies.

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Some companies use a combination of Agile frameworks (often called hybrid Agile) or a combination of some predictive, plan-driven processes with elements of an Agile framework (also called a hybrid development approach). A hybrid Agile project might include classic Scrum elements such as a product owner and development sprints as well as a Kanban board that is used to pull work based on capacity. A hybrid development approach could involve predictive project planning along with more flexible Agile development cycles. Decisions about which approach to use— whether it is a strictly Agile approach, such as Scrum, or a hybrid approach—should be based on the needs of the project as well as the organizational environment in which the project will unfold.

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Paul Dandurdan, CEO of PieMatrix, a company whose products include a visual project management software platform, argues that there is value in both Agile and predictive, or waterfall, approaches. He propose a hybrid Agile/waterfall manifesto in a blog post that also highlights what he sees as the limitations of the original Agile Manifesto: “Hybrid Agile Manifesto and Spider Man.”

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Hackathons: Fostering an Agile Culture

Hackathons, another type of Agile experience, are typically multiday events in which software developers work on a solution to a specific problem with the goal of generating a number of innovative ideas and/or prototypes.

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Hackathons are similar to Agile sprints, but typically involve more intensive collaboration, with participants gathering in one place and dividing up into teams. Originating as a way for anyone to get involved in creating open-source software, hackathons are now common on college campuses and in the corporate world. For a glimpse into how Mastercard uses hackathons to generate new product ideas and foster an Agile culture within its organization

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Kindly repost, comment and stay close for part ,,,,10,,,,,

And we shall study LEAN SIX SIGMA AND DMAIC METHODOLOGY OVERVIEW next stay tuned.

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