Lean project management and accelerating projects
Channel: Playbook
Date: 2018-09-11

This video shows you two paradigm shifting concepts around what causes late projects and the Lean and Agile Principles that can fix them. So let’s cover those first.

One of the problems we mentioned in the explainer video is that the work in new product development is invisible, so we can’t even see when projects are stalled. That’s important, because it turns out there are four major causes of late projects…

1. People have incorrect priorities (so they are working on the wrong thing at the wrong time)

2. People have the correct priorities but are multitasking (and therefore slowing down everything) 

3. People have the correct priorities but aren’t available (so the work is sitting idle, waiting to be worked on) 

4. (and finally) Unexpected technical issues

The first three items only cause the project to be delayed one day each time they occur. But the fourth item can cause delays of days, weeks, or even months at a time, so you would expect it to have the biggest impact on our projects. But you’d be wrong. See, even though any of the first three only cause a one day delay each time they occur, their cumulative impact over time adds up to be significantly more than the delays caused by the unexpected technical issues.