Lean

Lean Deployment Planning Guide Resources

A Lean Deployment Plan for a project can help project teams apply Lean principles and practices along the various stages of a project by embedding them into their project management processes. The plan is developed following the formation of the project team and the development and validation of the project business plan. Therefore, the plan is ideally meant to be developed by the project team collaboratively with commitment to the resources needed for implementation. The Guide was developed through a grant from the Lean Construction Institute (LCI).

This guide is designed to walk the project team through the steps of the planning procedure to systematically create their project specific Lean Deployment Plan. The guide employs a simple, four-step process to 1) prepare the process, 2) select the lean methods, 3) plan the process for each methods use, and, 4) integrate those methods into a project plan to deploy on the project. Each step of the procedure is defined and described in detail in the Guide. Along with this description, there are also template resources provided with the download to help the project team work through the steps of this planning procedure, and document their project specific Lean Deployment Plan. We welcome your feedback on the planning guide so that we can continue to improve this planning resource.

Due to each project being unique, a different approach and set of strategies may be required to meet project specific requirements. Therefore, with every project, a different set of methods also need to be selected that are complementary to each other in delivering the critical project needs.

The project team should evaluate all potential methods in order to understand two aspects. One, which methods have the potential to really help with achieving the project’s conditions of satisfaction and two, how experienced is the project team to implement a specific method. The method’s potential in meeting the project’s conditions of satisfaction is based on expert judgement of the lean coach and the project leadership. The project team’s comfort level in implementing a method is based on the project team’s awareness and understanding of each method.

‍Operating System Methods

Operating system methods are related to the core project work and can be planned in advance for implementation when the project is about to start. For example, Target Value Design can be used to define the project targets based on customer value and then the project scope and cost can be managed to meet those targets along the project duration. This is implemented by allowing the design to be developed and the production system to be designed per the project targets offering maximum value.

‍‍Organization Methods

Organization methods help align the supportive project processes that enable the project’s operating system, such as team organization, problem solving, decision-making, etc. and help the project team set-up the groundwork before starting the project execution. For example, “Onboarding is a way for new employees to quickly acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become effective organizational members.” Thus having a pre-planned onboarding process for new project team members will increase engagement and commitment, resulting in higher performance.