Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Managing A Project Through Lean And Agile Strategies - What You Need To Know

By Eric Ridvert


Project management involves using several strategies relating to planning, organizing, securing, and managing resources to reach specific goals. The said resources are not limited to finances and it can mean manpower, time, and existing equipment. A project lead should be realistic and strategic in his processes in order to work around these limitations and attain goals.

Companies often hire the services of project management consultancy firms to spearhead a particular endeavor, solve a problem, or review and optimize processes. The consultancies work behind the scenes, providing expertise, training, and tools that their clients would otherwise not have access to. There are different schemes these firms utilize to ensure efficient project completion, lean and agile methodologies are some of the most common.

Lean consultants believe that the processes involved in a particular project should allow for the elimination and avoidance of 'wastes' in order to optimize available resources and produce better results. People walking more than necessary to perform a task can be considered a waste. To address such, lean consultants can recommend a more efficient workspace layout to reduce repetitive and unnecessary walking about in between stations. Waste could also mean retaining offerings considered obsolete or irrelevant by consumers. This problem on overproduction increases an organization's expenditures in terms of managing inventory. Instruments created by lean consultants to accurately appraise a product's quality and market performance will enable their contractors to identify offerings which are profitable or merely hogging resources.

Agile consultants believe on a flexible approach to managing a particular project. This strategy works well for projects where there are a lot of unknowns or those with considerable uncertainty. Instead of a top-down approach, agile methodologies assume a more collaborative leadership style. Since there are no rigid hierarchies, the project team will be able to nimbly adjust, take advantage of emerging opportunities, and readily discard processes which delay project completion or decrease profitability. With these in mind, a project's success is influenced to a certain degree by the agile consultant's astuteness.

Both agile and lean models of project management espouse the idea of plan-do-check-act. No matter what stage of a project is in, its inner clockwork should be constantly evaluated and improved in light of efficiency, effectiveness and flexibility.




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