Making the Case for Kaizen for Project TeamsBy Jon Miller |Comments: 1 A few weeks ago I got a call from Hal Macomber inviting me to join a group of bloggers for a co-blogging exercise. The topic, he said, was to be "kaizen in temporary organizations". My first thought was "kaizen in a temp agency?" As Hal explained further, I understood that by temporary organization he meant project teams. It sounded interesting, so I accepted. But my next though was "All organizations are temporary". That's a deep thought for another day. So what makes project teams special, and why kaizen it? Before I answer that question and attempt at making the case for kaizen for project teams, I need to clarify what I mean by "Kaizen" and "Project Teams". I think I'm safe on the "for". The way I distinguish projects from other types of work, improvement activities or pastimes is that 1) projects tend take longer than a day, 2) projects often involve more than one person and 3) there are many individual steps or activities that make up a project, and 4) these steps or activities tend to be separated by time and distance. The educated Lean thinker will recognize that in my view, projects have tremendous waste-generating potential. This is a recipe that calls for kaizen. What is Kaizen? Follow the link to the left for a great story from the fashion world, courtesy of Kathleen Fasanella, which illustrates kaizen. Kaizen is a methodology that allows you to make small changes continuously forever, or big changes over short periods of time, depending on how you use it. It's been around for over 50 years, and a wide variety of organizations are waking up to the power of kaizen. Among other reasons, Project Management deserves the attention the seven bloggers are giving it this week by viewing it through the lens of kaizen because project management is big business. Flipping through a magazine I saw that the book A Guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge made the BusinessWeek top 10 list. The book is in good company, along with 6 other books on becoming millionaires and three others on power, influence and getting things done. Even if most people are buying the book for the PMP exam, that's still a lot of books. But there are many tools in the project management body of knowledge. Do we need to add kaizen? Isn't kaizen just a fancy word for continuous improvement? Kaizen is a Japanese word and it's one of the two pillars of the Toyota philosophy along with "respect for people", and it's the easier of the two to get started with if you are currently lacking both. Why copy Toyota? If you've missed the news about struggling GM and thriving Toyota, you can read some of my commentary about it here. But we don't make automobiles (the same thing over and over), you protest. So why do kaizen in project teams, or in any temporary organization, when you are unlikely to do the exact same thing with the same people ever again? The one thing you can count on is change. You might as well add some of your ideas to the change and make it kaizen, change for the better. Having a kaizen mindset lets you do this. This week the seven of us bloggers will do our best to help you develop your kaizen mindset. We'll look at kaizen for project teams from these angles: Workgroup Kaizen for Project Teams: Making improvements for team members who perform the same work. Workstream Kaizen for Project Teams: Making improvements across time, space or functional boundaries. Quick and Easy Kaizen for Project Teams: Making improvements that are small, local and within one's own power to affect. Kaizen Blitz for Project Teams: Making improvements rapidly for a large impact across a well-defined scope, such as a project. Read about kaizen for project teams each day this week from the six other unique perspectives of Hal Macomber, Norman Bodek, Chuck Frey, Joe Ely, Bill Waddell and Mark Graban on their respective blogs. I look forward to the end of the week and the resulting practical and useful knowledge from the combined output of the bloggers. The Kaizen for Project Teams blog entries on Panta Rei are Making the Case for Kaizen for Project Teams, Workgroup Kaizen for Project Teams, Workstream Kaizen for Project Teams, Quick and Easy Kaizen for Project Teams, and Kaizen Blitz for Project Teams. |
Jon,
I'm thrilled that you've allowed comments. I'm a big fan of your work -not that I want to be gushy- but I'm looking forward to reading the insightful comments from others and hopefully adding a thought or two of my own. And, thanks for the mention.