Lean Scheduling: A Lean Way of Scheduling Product Development

Typically, development projects have a high complexity including many interdependent tasks. The effect of delays in one task onto the entire project cannot be easily seen. Often project teams have too little insight in the structure of the plan as a whole, making it difficult to have focus both on short term as well as longer term objectives. When the time until next milestone is longer, teams tend to overestimate their ability to catch up with plans that are delayed. This leads to high workload towards the end of the project. Lean Scheduling solves most common planning issues within development projects and levels out the pressure onto the project and prevents rework and fire fighting.

Lean scheduling builds upon key decisions rather than key tasks. The first advantage of this is that a network of decisions shows the development logic and team interactions very clearly, is easy to discuss and gives a high level overview that is a commonly owned basis for both team members and stakeholders. The second advantage is that knowledge creation is pulled by planning decisions - thinking about a decision immediately triggers the quest for knowledge to be able to make that decision. The project team uses the decision level of the planning to detail out major work packages, required to create the missing knowledge and activities. By installing a short cyclic review of status at the lowest activity level, deviations are made visible right at the point they appear, enabling the team to correct them much earlier in time. Because the detailed levels are only planned for the near future, the Lean Scheduling approach is very flexible for changes and surprises that inevitably are part of doing innovation.

Lean Scheduling has been developed by experimenting with lean approaches, such as knowledge based decision based development (Kennedy), three level planning (Mascitelli) and principles of tact, in multiple development projects for about a year. That is why lean scheduling is a very practical approach that seems to work in many different contexts. Experience shows that lean scheduling is not “just a tool”, it also pulls the right behaviors, such as working knowledge based and striving to make problems visible and creating the right support to solve them.

In this one hour presentation, Suzanne will introduce the lean scheduling approach, explain its backgrounds and show examples. Just enough to get started in your own organization with this exciting new approach for managing complex projects!