Applying lean principles to project management provides a simple, flexible, and tailored approach to projects of any scale. This allows SMEs to maximise their competitive advantages, such as flexibility and innovation, while minimising bureaucracy and waste.
Introducing the Lean Project Delivery System (LPDS) Framework
The LPDS framework aligns the five conventional project phases with Womack and Jones’ five core Lean principles: Identify Value, Map the Value Stream, Create Flow, Establish Pull, and Pursue Perfection.
In this five-part series, we will look at each of these principles in turn and how they can be applied to project delivery.
Part 5: Closing | Pursuing Perfection
In this final part of the Lean Project Delivery System series, we focus on project closure. This phase is about achieving formal completion while capturing meaningful feedback to drive continuous improvement, i.e. taking those valuable lessons and using them to make things better next time!
If you’ve been using a Compliance Matrix to track deliverables and delivery status throughout the project, this becomes a powerful tool at close-out. It allows you to confirm that all contractual obligations have been satisfied and provides documented evidence of fulfilment during the final wrap-up review with the customer.
Once all customer requirements have been formally signed off, schedule a lessons learned review with the project team. This is a critical mechanism for pursuing perfection; identifying what worked well, what didn’t, and where waste can be reduced on future projects.
Crucially, lessons learned must be recorded and stored electronically in a central, searchable repository. I’ve experienced varying degrees of success with lessons learned processes across different organisations, with few following through effectively. In most cases, the root cause is the absence of a single, accessible location where learning can be searched, interrogated, and applied by others. Too often, they are documented once and then filed away, never to be revisited or reused during future project planning. This is a prime example of waste!
Final thoughts
I hope this series has provided some food for thought on how focusing on core Lean processes – value identification, pull planning, continuous flow, and visible, continuous improvement – can offer a strong, anti-bureaucratic alternative to traditional project management approaches.
For SMEs in particular, the Lean Project Delivery System provides a way to deliver projects with greater clarity, speed, and discipline, without the overhead of heavyweight frameworks that often add more friction than value.
