Efficiency & Motivation

Lean Management in project management: what is it for and how to implement it effectively?

A project is successful when you minimise effort and maximise value. The Lean Management philosophy, derived from Toyota’s experience, is a precise strategy that turns this thinking into reality. Find out how to apply lean management step by step to increase the effectiveness of your projects.

In this article, you will learn: What Lean Management is and its project focus. How Lean eliminates seven types of waste. The benefits of a Pull System in projects. Steps to implement Lean Management effectively. Importance of continuous improvement (Kaizen). Common pitfalls when adopting Lean in teams. How Lean improves efficiency, quality, and resource use.

What is a LEAN?

Lean Management derives directly from the Toyota Production System (TPS), whose creator was Taiichi Ohno. The philosophy is based on a simple but revolutionary principle: elimination of waste (Muda, Mura, Muri), continuous improvement (Kaizen) and maximisation of customer value. Although Lean was born as an answer to the question of how to manage production in a company, today its principles are successfully implemented globally in various areas of business, far beyond production itself.

How does Lean Management improve project efficiency?

Lean management is an approach that has one mission in projects: to streamline work and give the customer as much value as possible. How does it work in practice? Improving efficiency starts with identifying and eliminating seven types of waste that squander resources (i.e. time, money, team energy). Removing these unnecessary activities brings tangible benefits: faster task completion, better product or service quality, and optimal use of resources. Achieving such results is a direct outcome of proper project management practices.

So waste is anything that consumes resources but does not increase the final value for the customer:

• Overproduction: involves producing something too early or in excess. This can be seen, for example, in the creation of unapproved functionalities or reports that will almost immediately require changes.
• Waiting: includes any downtime during which the team remains idle. In practice, this is time wasted waiting for document approval, access to a tool, or customer feedback – all of which generate unnecessary costs.
• Transportation: refers to the unnecessary transfer of information or documents. An example is when a document has to go through too many stages and people before it reaches its destination.
• Over-processing: means performing work too thoroughly or too complexly in relation to the actual customer requirements.
• Inventory: this is the accumulation of excess work in progress (WIP). This waste involves piling up too many started but unfinished tasks or generating documentation that quickly loses its value.
• Motion: refers to unnecessary effort, both physical and mental. This includes wasting time searching for files, participating in ineffective meetings, and having to constantly switch context between tasks (multitasking).
• Defects: these are errors and mistakes that absolutely require subsequent corrective work. Errors in the code or misunderstanding of customer requirements increase lead time and reduce quality.

The pull system in project management - working on demand

In the pull system, a task is only ‘pulled’ by the team for execution when that team is actually ready and has free capacity. This is different from the traditional Push model, where work is ‘pushed’ forward regardless of the recipient’s readiness. The Push model often leads to task backlogs and overload. The main benefit of the Pull approach is that it helps to avoid overproduction. It prevents things from being done ‘in advance’ (e.g. documentation or functionality) before the customer needs them. Such excess creates unnecessary inventory (WIP), which quickly becomes obsolete and generates costly corrections.

Implementing the pull system significantly improves predictability and workflow. This is because:

• The system prevents work in progress (WIP) from accumulating, so that individual stages of the process are not overwhelmed with excess tasks.
• When work stops in the value stream, it is immediately apparent which stage is not ‘pulling’ it. This point becomes a visible bottleneck, allowing for quick intervention and process improvement.
• Teams can focus on fewer tasks at a time. This increased focus reduces errors and significantly contributes to a better quality end result.

For the Pull System to work efficiently and effectively, it is necessary to use tools that help visualise the workflow and control its volume. Two mechanisms work well here: Kanban boards and WIP limits. The former are used to visualise all project tasks and their current status in the process (e.g. ‘To do’, ‘In progress’, “Completed”). It is this visualisation that allows the team to ‘pull’ tasks from the previous stage as soon as space becomes available in the column they are currently working on. WIP (Work In Progress) limits, on the other hand, are fixed maximum limits on the number of tasks that can be in a given stage of the process at any one time. These limits prevent employees from ‘pushing’ tasks to subsequent stages. This enforces a ‘pull’ mechanism, which effectively helps to avoid overproduction.

How to implement Lean Management effectively in a project team?

Implementing Lean Management within a project team is a process that requires commitment and a cultural transformation focused on achieving faster execution, better quality, and optimal resource use. This shift goes beyond a one-off change, establishing effective and modern project management that utilizes strategic project management techniques.

The effective implementation of Lean Management in a project team can be divided into four steps:

1. First, you need to standardise knowledge. Make sure that the entire team understands the role of Lean Management – i.e. how to eliminate waste and what really constitutes value for the customer.
2. Next, carefully examine how the work is progressing. Visually map the current Lean workflow. This will allow you to quickly locate and identify where the seven types of waste occur in projects.
3. This step is a transition to an ‘on-demand’ (Pull System) model of work. This means that work is ‘pulled’ only when there is room for it, which prevents overload.
4. Finally, you need to introduce continuous improvement, or Kaizen. Regularly measuring results, gathering feedback, and organising short but frequent review sessions will help you identify and implement small improvements that will make a huge difference in the long run.

When introducing the concept of Lean Management, teams often encounter pitfalls that can undermine even the best-planned efforts. The most dangerous of these is a cultural mistake – ignoring people. Lean should not be treated solely as a set of lean tools, but rather as a focus on changing the work culture, promoting respect for employees and continuous improvement. Another common mistake is blindly copying Lean Management examples from other companies. Instead, it is necessary to understand the principles of Lean and adapt them to the unique specifics of a given project. Over-implementation should also be avoided – Lean Management is a process of small, continuous improvements (Kaizen) that are introduced in stages. The last critical mistake is a lack of focus on flow, where the priority is to optimise lean workflow throughout the process, rather than maximising the utilisation of individual team members.

Summary: Lean Management as a foundation for efficient and modern project execution

Lean Management drives operational efficiency, delivering faster implementation, better quality, and optimal resource use. This is the foundation for successful project management. For practical application of Lean principles, a dedicated tool is essential. FlexiProject meets this need, allowing for seamless managing production projects using FlexiProject and ensuring effective project resource management with FlexiProject that aligns with all Lean goals.