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What Types of Waste Do You See?
Value is one of the fundamental concepts in Lean. When analyzing the process from a customer’s perspective, Lean practitioners separate value-added activities from non-value added ones, which are muda or waste. By relentlessly removing waste, Lean organizations are able to deliver value to their customers fast and at the lowest costs. Many people are familiar… [read more…]
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Is Your Process in Control?
In 1980, the American Society for Quality (ASQ) republished Walter Shewhart’s seminal book Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product as a 50th anniversary edition. In his Dedication to this commemorative issue, W. Edwards Deming wrote: “There was never before greater need for statistical methods in industry and in research.” I’d say the same today,… [read more…]
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An Indispensable Competency in an Agile Organization
One of the most common reasons for project trouble or failure is an unsuitably large project scope. The problem is not necessarily unrealistic goals or inadequate resources. When the large scope extends the project timeline far into the future, it risks becoming irrelevant before meaningful impact is achieved. External circumstances simply change and invalidate the… [read more…]
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Project Managers are Managers
Project management is often misunderstood. Despite recognition of its importance, many organizations have low project management maturity. Few have established proper project management governance, structure, processes, roles & responsibilities in the normal business operations. As a result, project managers have to navigate in an environment where project sponsors, teams, and other stakeholders have little experience… [read more…]
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Setting SMART Goals
Recently I had conversations with several people on different occasions about effective goal setting. It is a common practice to use Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) as criteria to create goals. However, using SMART goals for effective management or decision making is not as simple as it appears. For example, “improve product ABC… [read more…]
