Improving Project Management with Lean Thinking?

In the new business economy, project management has become a central way for undertaking several of the business activities. One of the increasing and most significant concerns with projects is that, projects are behind schedule, over budget and show unsatisfactory performance in terms quality and customer satisfaction. In the last few decades the manufacturing industry successfully improved quality and productivity, by using the concepts of lean thinking. The thesis explores the relevance of lean concepts in project management and how lean concepts can improve project productivity. The qualitative method is used in this study. Further, a systematic approach was used to identify the relevance of lean concepts in project management. The qualitative data was collected using an interview with a project consultant. The results of the study reveal that all concepts of lean thinking are relevant to project management in specific kinds of projects. However, a greater degree of understanding and interpretation of each concept is needed when applying lean thinking in project management. Furthermore, some of the concepts have to be interpreted with caution when they are used in innovative projects. In general, it is found that, lean project management can improve project productivity. The findings suggest that the lean concepts can reduce cost and time which are two key measures of project success. The results of this study can be seen as a tentative framework intended to stimulate further discussion about integrating lean thinking in project and program management.