Project Management: An Essential Guide for Beginners Who Want to Understand Agile, Scrum, Lean Six Sigma, Kanban and Kaizen When Applied to Managing Projects

By Wade Golden

If you want to achieve success in project management, then keep reading...

Some projects were always bound to fail. However, that is just a tiny minority. Most projects fail at least partly because of poor project management. If the project manager does not keep the team focused, doesn't keep control of progress, and doesn't keep checking that the project is meeting its objectives, projects easily drift. It is like letting a boat sail on without keeping a hand on the tiller—sooner or later, it will drift off course.
This book aims to demystify project management and show you two different approaches that have a big following: Agile/Scrum, a very free form methodology that is good for services and software, and Lean Six Sigma, which is more data-driven and particularly useful for high-volume businesses from call centers to manufacturing.
In Project Management: An Essential Guide for Beginners Who Want to Understand Agile, Scrum, Lean Six Sigma, Kanban and Kaizen When Applied to Managing Projects, the following topics will be discussed:

• Project Management: Before You Start
• Agile and Scrum
• Lean Six Sigma
• Kanban and Kaizen
• And many more!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wade Golden
• Release date: Jun 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393053057

Book preview

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Introduction

Projects are a way of launching your organization into the future. Whether it is the US Government building a new generation of fighter planes, a major bank launching an asset finance division, a software company developing new functionality, or a corporate building its new headquarters, you only have to read the papers and see a whole load of projects being started, progressed, and completed... only to end up as failures.

According to KPMG’s PMI Pulse of the Profession report,

48% of projects are not finished in time;

43% spend more than the expected budget; and

31% don’t meet the original goals of the project.

This adds up to more than 100%, which is pretty startling. (Of course, the answer is that some projects are late and over budget; some are over budget and fail to meet the objectives... And some are late, over budget, and failures, which makes them a complete waste of money, time, and resources.)

Some projects were always bound to fail. However, that is just a tiny minority. (Perhaps nothing could have saved New Coke.) Most projects fail at least partly because of poor project management. If the project manager does not keep the team focused, doesn’t keep control of progress, and doesn’t keep checking that the project is meeting its objectives, projects easily drift. It is like letting a boat sail on without keeping a hand on the tiller—sooner or later, it will drift off course.

That makes project management one of the key management disciplines for the current times. But if you have come across project management in your daily work, you will know that it can be full of buzz words, methodologies, reporting schemas, charts—an impenetrable forest of jargon.

This book aims to demystify project management and show you two different approaches that have a big following: Agile/Scrum, a very free form methodology that is good for services and software, and Lean Six Sigma, which is more data-driven and particularly useful for high-volume businesses from call centers to manufacturing.

Kanban and Kaizen, Japanese approaches to improving quality, will also be discussed. While these are not project management methodologies as such, they are beneficial ways to improve a project’s productivity. They can also really get project team members fired up—which is another part of the project manager’s job.

The aim here is not to get you through Lean Six Sigma certification—you will have to take a course for that—or enable you to take on your own Scrum project on Monday morning. Most professional project managers will tell you it took them several years and several projects before they really got rolling. However, you will be given the basics so that you are not only familiar with the different methodologies, but have a feel for which one suits your personal style and the organization you work for.

Project management jargon will further be clarified, along with how the processes work. If you have to contribute to someone else’s project, you will have a better feel for how things should work; if you have a project of your own to run, you’ll have a gentler learning curve.

And if you are working in a start-up, or you have a small family business, then you won’t need certification or expensive paperwork to get started managing your projects. This book will give you the gist of how to run a project, keep your team motivated, and achieve your objectives.

Remember: Objectives are what project management is all about. Be clear about the objectives first and foremost—and keep referring back to them to avoid scope creep—, and you won’t go too far wrong. But if you forget your objectives and get mired in the project charts and workflow, it will be easy to miss the target by a long way.

Chapter 1 – Project Management: Before You Start

What is Project Management?

Project management can be seen as simply Getting a project done, and in a nutshell, that is it.

However, more technically, you could call it the application of different processes to achieve your specific project objectives. You are applying knowledge, skills, and experience to the task—your own if you’re managing the project and the capabilities of the team members who may have their own specialist skills to contribute.

Project management is focused on achieving the objectives within agreed parameters (on time, on budget) and according to project acceptance criteria (such as quality and specification).

A simple instance might be the project of building a house. The house is your final deliverable. You have a budget and a timescale as constraints—it has to be ready by a certain date, and your materials and labor must not cost more than the budget. Your client will also have given you specifications, such as the quality of finish and perhaps the energy rating, as well as basics, such as the number of bedrooms and bathrooms.

Project management has to deliver all of this—not just some of it, all of it.

The house is great, but you’re over budget – fail.

You’re on budget, and the house is exactly what the client wanted, but he’s been living in an RV for two months waiting for you to finish – fail.

On time, under budget, but the plastering and painting look rather amateurish, and one of the bathrooms hasn’t been plumbed in – fail.

On time, under budget, to spec. But you didn’t get the paperwork done, and the building inspector won’t sign it off – fail.

(Oh yes, project management is also about the paper trail, and getting things documented properly.)

If you were a house builder, you might think that your job is building. However, if you are a project manager running a building site, you know your job is not building but managing a build, and that those are two different things. Project management is not about plastering or wiring or laying bricks; it is about managing the materials, the personnel, and your finances to ensure the house is ready on time and to budget.

Every commercial builder will tell you that good craftspeople can be appalling project managers. Good finance people can also be terrible project managers—the skills you need to put together a great finance package are not the same as those you will need to run a building project!

But project management is not the same as ordinary management. If you run a factory, for instance, you will be running business as usual, day after day. The factory operates continuously, and you expect to carry on running it for the foreseeable future. Project management, on the other hand, has a finite timescale. When the project is completed, you are done. Often, time is of the essence—for instance, getting a new product out before your competitors, or finishing a new building so your client can move in on a certain date. The date might be a regulatory requirement (like new requirements on managing client data within a software system), a client requirement (as in the case of the house), or it might reflect the market (ready for the holiday season).

If you choose a career as a regular

Reviews for Project Management

[Oliver Moore · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good overview/summary of the various agile methodologies to help you choose what you want to learn in more detail