Robert Allen — inactive contributor

In reviewing several previous articles in this article series, it’s apparent there is much in common with product development, project management and process improvement.

Let’s look at a brief list that considers a structured approach vs. unstructured

While this list is pretty “high-level” it reveals the importance of project leadership, governance and management.  A structured approach (for example a phase-gate structure, DMAIC or agile/scrum) enables management and planning, which enables governance and governance enables leadership.

Some structured approaches may be more suitable than others depending on the type of project.  However, any structure (with leadership, governance and management in mind) is probably better than none.

Our previous article identified several forms of waste, specific to completing tasks, as detailed by the following table:

Keep in mind, by focusing on tasks, this table assumes several things:

• a project selection process that ensures the project is valuable
• robust project requirements & planning
• project sponsorship and resources (team members) are made available

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Our previous article compared agile/scrum with lean/kaizen and revealed several similar fundamentals that helped make each methodology easier to understand.

Since the objective of lean and agile is waste reduction, we also want to identify and eliminate various forms of waste.

In order to do this, first let’s consider our objective to manufacture hardware product, develop a hardware or digital product and/or execute a project:

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Tasks (or action items) are a fundamental building block of an ongoing work-effort or project schedule.  While we tend to think of completed actions as deliverables, a project schedule can also be considered a project deliverable….and the value of well-written task (within the schedule or otherwise) is often overlooked.

Generally, a task begins with a verb (some action to be performed) to achieve a milestone or outcome to some desired level of completion.  (Recall a previous related article where we discussed the “definition of done”.)

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When considering a business process improvement (or some other) initiative, we also want to communicate to motivate the right behaviors.  However, initiatives often seem to use buzzwords or use titles familiar to employees that have seen such initiatives come and go (the key word being “go”).

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When it comes to ensuring a task or deliverable is accomplished, we often see the word “owner” used.  Perhaps surprisingly, there really is no true ‘owner’ of anything in the context of program or project management.

We can begin explaining this with two adjectives:  responsible and accountable.

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