Lean Management Methods For Complex Projects: A Discussion

Voice of the Customer

Lean project management has main focus on the lean execution so that business expectations and profitability can be achieved with proper waste management. It helps to guide the resources and practices for the optimal utilization, consistent improvements and systematic execution. The present essay will discuss voice of the customers, critical to customer requirement and critical to quality in the context of FIFA world cup sport event. Also, various ways to implement the project management through lean concept will be discussed with their significance. Besides to it, various project management techniques including PMBOK, PRINCE2, agile, OPM and lean project sigma will be discussed. 

Football is the most lovable outdoor game in the world as the statics shows that recent FIFA World Cup has 3.2 million audiences with participation of 211 countries at qualification level. The battleship was among the 32 countries. However to plan the FIFA World Cup event is a complex task with alignment of customer needs, preferences and demands. The following are three major terminologies those are identified and elaborated in the context of football sport event:

Voice of the Customer: It is the process to understand the customer aversions, preferences and expectations in detailed manner. Moreover, it is a market research technique used to collect the information for customer needs and wants so that the organization can use the hierarchical structure to prioritize the significant decisions. It is mainly used before the design phase to improve the product or service (Found & Harrison, 2012). Therefore, the sport event can use the technique to collect the quantitative and qualitative results and for that, the individual interviews, ethnographic techniques and focus groups can be created. A typical group of 30-50 customers can participate to generate the need statements those can be prioritized accordingly in a hierarchy to determine relative significance and satisfaction with contemporary alternatives.

Critical to Customer Requirements: The expectations of the customers can be classified into two forms: needs and wants. Needs are functions or features in product or services those drive the customers for purchasing whereas wants are additional features those empower the customer to choose suitable product or service (Burke, 2013). Therefore, the event has critical customer requirements as quality in broadcasting, performance of a team or nation and tickets to view the live shows. Also, the availability of the tickets and services at event location are considered as critical customer requirements. The sport event can process with secondary research to generate significant decision on customer requirements with event.

Critical to Customer Requirements

Critical to Quality parameters: It is an approach to determine the quality related features expected at customer side and to determine the problems to achieve them. It means that the technique is used to determine the problem existing between the input and output process and influencing the quality standard. Therefore, the sport event has to focus on valuable customer needs and ensure the quality of the event with consideration of physical factors also (Harrison & Lock, 2017). For example, the ground quality, sitting arrangements, ticket availability and event execution also impacts the quality.

The project management can be defined as the set of initiate, plan, design, monitor and close stages to complete the task in systematic manner. Lean project management has all the stages but has additional focus and priorities on the waste management. It means to reduce the wastage in design or implementation phase and deliver more values to the customers.

The planning is based on long term goals rather than to complete short term goals. It means that project team has to develop the sense of aim to achieve the goals. Also, effective motivation is required to guide the team to identify waste or gap to achieve the desired outcomes. A continuous process flow is essential to highlight problem areas. Innovations and creativity is required to ensure the entire project has desired quality. The pull system can be used to synchronize the demand and supply so that stakeholders have status of execution and effective project management process. Besides to it, the lean project management in the event has focused on the priorities, not on quantities, to ensure that the stakeholders are not overburdened (Ballard & Tommelein, 2012). Equal work distribution is essential to ensure predefined play of team. The collaboration and communication are two major things to support lean project management as they can develop the culture of problem solving and quality outcomes.

The implementation of lean project has another way to focus on the consistency in execution as it drives the employee engagement and quality improvement. The standardization of the process and definition of baseline are required to ensure the optimal use of the resources for desired performance. The sport event also has a way to educate the team and manage the reliable and effective technology to support their operations. It can help team to contribute efficiently and reduce the waste. Consensus based decision making is used in the project management as it helps to determine the source and cause of the risk or problem leading poor quality or performance (Hilton & Sohal, 2012). Therefore, the event can be simplified with the learning based approach where the stages of projects are monitored for quality and used as reference to meet the quality standards.   

Critical to Quality Parameters

FIFA world cup event can be achieved with proper integration of the communication among team, sharing of experience, consideration of requirements, consistent performance and monitoring of the quality standards (Burke, 2013). For that, several methodologies and tech techniques are available but it is required that principles of the project management are integrated to achieved desired outcomes. The event can be completed with the use of agile or scrum method as both are effective to integrate the stakeholders and their requirements with alignment of the cost, time and other factors on the execution.

PMBOK Guide: It can be defined as the set of standard guidelines and terminologies for effective project management. It is developed over time to ensure that project management has involvement of the effective practices. Therefore, PMBOK guide can be used to lead with high performance and optimal utilization of the resources and capabilities (Matos & Lopes, 2013). It provides major tools and techniques including critical path analysis and work breakdown structure. The sport event has benefit of the process map suggested in the publication to achieve the control and desired outcomes.

It provides mainly five stages in the project management. First is initiating in which the stakeholders are involved and concept is developed through the integration of the resources. The initiating stage is used to develop the understanding with project and desirables. Planning phase of the process map can help to determine the scope, time, cost, quality, communication, human resources, risk and procurements required to measure for the project (Gasik, 2015). It helps to determine the inputs and their effectiveness to achieve the benefits. The football event has to consider the related factors and capabilities for the desired performance and quality. The execution and controlling phases are required to execute the project in a systematic manner and control the capabilities. In execution, human resources are critical whereas controlling is based on the inputs of the project. Once the outcomes are achieved, project is closed. Following are major activities in process mapping:

PRINCE2: It is process based method for the project management so that easy tailoring and scalability can be achieved. The method provides key inputs and their outcomes with goals to achieve during the processing. Prince is more systematic and effective to complete the variable types of the project. It has mainly three stages those are further classified into four processes. First, the directing stage which is active tills the closure of the project (Bentley, 2012). It is mainly used by the management board to report and monitor the progress and determine the decisions for the quality and performance. Project directing team has role to initiate the project, set the boundaries, provide ad hoc direction and close the project. However, they have no interaction for day-to-day activities. The managing stage has main focus on the keys working on the project to deliver the quality outcomes. Once the project is managed and completed, it is delivered. The method has following major keys across the stages:

Implementing Lean Project Management

Start up a project: It is a short length and first process of the project management. The process has mainly three goals to achieve. First to ensure that project management has all the required information and it is available to them within time. Second, there is a project management team through designing and appointing method. Third, the project has initiating plan to proceed.

Initiate project: It means to initiate the project. For example, during initiating, the event has objectives to determine that there are sufficient reasons to process in project and stable management is established. It also means to accept the business case and foundation before to commence for the work (Matos & Lopes, 2013). This process provides baseline to the resources, encourage management team for ownership and measure the time and cost for the project activities.

Manage a stage boundary: The process has goal to support project management for decision making so that they can determine either to proceed or stop. It has main function in event planning to provide the reporting to the management and measure the changes and lessons for the project practices.

Figure 1: PRINCE2 processes

Control stage: It is used to monitor the performance and quality in work. For example, the project can be monitored for changes, situations and reporting. It is also required authorize the work and collect the information for activities to support decision making.

Manage project delivery: The process is mainly required to measure the outcomes according to the specification and ensure that the work is complete as expected. It is used to check the quality, cost, performance and other factors on the project.

Close project: The process is used to handover the resources, exchange the benefits and close the project with completion of dues on the project. It has stages to handover the documents and reports related to the project with signing of the project closure document.  

OPM: It can be defined as the framework for strategy execution which utilizes programs, project and portfolio management along with business enabling practices and support the strategic execution for better performance, results and competitive benefits. Therefore, it is effective to customize the practices according to the context or situation. It can help the current sport event project to achieve the alignment of the practices with strategies and integrate the enablers in the execution process. It also provides consistency of learning and delivery with values to the organization (Kerzner, 2018). It has main focus on the vision, strategy, portfolio, program and projects and creates value decisions and result delivery.

Project Management Techniques

Figure 2: Organizational project management

Agile: It is a project management and implementation tool in which the requirements are delivered iteratively and incrementally to during the project life cycle. The method has core values to deliver the desired outcomes through the use of trust, empowerment, flexibility and collaboration in operations. Scrum and lean project methodologies are based on the agile method (Moran, 2015). It is similar to the traditional processes for the project management and implementation but it has constant integration of the stakeholders to ensure the quality and performance. Besides to it, the agile tool helps to reuse the practices, knowledge and outcomes to support the project execution. The tool is effective to meet the customer demands and expectations with the project execution (Kerzner, 2018). It has major process as evaluate in which the outcome of the practices is analysed through the significant stakeholders.

Figure 3: Agile methodology

Lean six-sigma: The process is mainly used for the implementation stage where it can improve, optimize and stabilize the operations and designs. The tool is useful for the organizations to derive the six-sigma but it also can be used as independent framework in project management. It has mainly five stages to achieve the improvements and optimization.

Define: The aim of the process is to define the context with strengths and capabilities. For example, the stage can determine the problems, goals, resources, scope and timeline for the project and for that, project charter documents can be used. It also helps to define the project team and discuss the problem, potential customers, voice of the customers and critical to quality factors (Hilton & Sohal, 2012).

Measure: The aim purpose of the stage is to create the baseline on which basis the improvements will be measured. Data collection is at core of the measure process so that performance metric baseline can be created and implemented to measure the performance.

Figure 4: DMAIC as lean six-sigma

Analyse: The main use of the stage is to analyse the collected information to reach the decision making. Therefore, the stage can be used to identify, and validate the data and eliminate the selected cause. All the problems are listed according to the priority where prioritized issues are considered for improvements. Data is analysed and process map is used to determine the capabilities to resolve the issues for the desired improvements and stabilities.

Improvement: Either the complete or part of the problem can be used to achieve the improvement. Design of experiments and other tools can be used to create the potential solutions. The simplified solution is implemented and tested through PDCA cycle. Later, failure mode and effects analysis is also used to identify the risks. Once it is done, the organization can create the plan and implement the improvements.

Control: The main objective of the stage is to sustain the benefits with the execution. Therefore, it monitors and controls the activities for the effective improvements. It helps to avoid the risks and ensure the alignment with the defined goals. 

Therefore, the goal of the project management for the FIFA world cup can be achieved with the consideration of voice of the customers and critical to customer requirements and quality. These things can be considered to understand the customer expectations and needs with the sport event. For that, lean project management can be applied to reduce the wastage of the resources, time and cost to meet the results as expected. The sport event can use several project management tools and techniques but it is recommended to use lean six-sigma or price2 tool to ensure the improvements and stability. The methods or tools are effective to optimize the performance and enhance the integration of the customer needs in the project. The outcomes of the project are required to verify and validated with the initially identified problems and scopes.

References

Ballard, G., & Tommelein, I. (2012). Lean management methods for complex projects. Engineering Project Organization Journal, 2(1-2), 85-96.

Bentley, C. (2012). Prince2: a practical handbook. Routledge.

Burke, R. (2013). Project management: planning and control techniques. New Jersey, USA.

Found, P. & Harrison, R., (2012). Understanding the lean voice of the customer. International Journal of Lean Six Sigma, 3(3), pp.251-267.

Gasik, S. (2015). An Analysis of Knowledge Management in PMBOK® Guide. PM World Journal, 4(1).

Harrison, F., & Lock, D. (2017). Advanced project management: a structured approach. Routledge.

Hilton, R. J., & Sohal, A. (2012). A conceptual model for the successful deployment of Lean Six Sigma. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 29(1), 54-70.

Kerzner, H. (2018). Project management best practices: Achieving global excellence. John Wiley & Sons.

Matos, S., & Lopes, E. (2013). Prince2 or PMBOK–a question of choice. Procedia Technology, 9, 787-794.

Moran, A. (2015). Agile project management. In Managing Agile (pp. 71-101). Springer, Cham.

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