Lean Project Management:

Eight Principles for Success

What do the worlds best project managers do to be so successful?

Lawrence P. Leach

You can be sure they don't read a 1,000 page project management book. They have learned what matters most to project success, and begin with the end in mind to do the things that they know matter. Unfortunately, generic project management training and books can not help you separate out the wheat from the chaff. Just like everyone does not need the same size pair of shoes, every project does not need the same set of tools and approaches. Great project managers know how to align what they do with the needs of the particular project. Benefits of the Lean Project Management (LPM) approach include:

• More successful projects (satisfied customers and project team, full-scope, on-time, under-budget).
• Faster project completion.
• Simple project status.
• Reduced unnecessary project paperwork.
• Clear signals on when to take action on the project.
• Reduced pressure on project team members.
• Reduction of the waste that causes project delays: Multi-tasking, Queuing, Student Syndrome, Parkinson's law.

Avoid the mistakes that others have made, and start out doing the right things right.

I spent over thirty years managing all kinds of projects, and successfully completed most of them. I was fortunate to learn from real project masters early in my career. I also had the advantage of working in project management companies, so I could see who succeeded, and who didn't. I quickly found the things that the successful ones always did, and the things that the unsuccessful project managers did not do. I had the opportunity to hone this knowledge by working with the world's best project management companies (names you would recognize in an instant), and with their best and most successful project managers. Using what they taught me, I was able to succeed on projects where others were failing. (O.K., one project ended up being canceled for causes that were unpredictable, and beyond my control. When the nuclear reactor blew up at Chernobyl, and I was managing projects to extend the operating life of a U.S. nuclear reactor that had certain design similarities...well, you can imagine how that turned out. There is only so much you can do.) LPM will take you to the solutions you need. Some of the results you can expect from using the eight principles include:

• Align your project stakeholders so they help you achieve project success.
• Create a project solution that really meets your stakeholder's needs.
• Plan your work so that your project team can complete their contributions with little stress.
• Apply simple project measurement to help your project team and assure everyone who cares about your project knows what they need to know, when the need to know it.
• Complete your projects in "half the time, all the time."

My new eBook is my second.  My first, Critical Chain Project Management, was a best seller! Lean Project Management takes you through the key steps to project success. Written for project managers taking on more challenging projects, or wanting to complete projects faster and with less team stress, Lean Project Management helps you identify and deploy the keys to project success. I consider some of these secrets as hiding in plain sight, because the project literature discusses some of them in one form or another. The first problem is that they are hidden in thousand page books with many things that aren't going to help your project. The second problem is that most project managers don't do them, leading to the high rate of project failure and dissatisfaction. Lean Project Management is a simple path to overcome both problems.

Focus on what matters most for your unique projects and project environment. LPM builds on the understanding that no other project has been or will be exactly the same as the one you are running now or preparing to run.

Learn the secrets that project experts have used to successfully deliver projects that satisfy everyone's needs, and sometimes end up as the fondest memories that people have. Also learn how the improved method of Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) can add that supercharger to your projects. Many project managers that have switched to CCPM report successfully completing projects in half the time, or less, with much less stress for the project team.

This book does not spend time with the theory behind the secrets, but rather focuses on giving you what you need to use them.

Although I am a Project Management Professional (PMP), certified by the Project Management Institute, (or, maybe because of it), I know you do not have to do everything in those thick project management books to succeed at projects. Many people that write those books have never run real projects, and will lead you down a path of creating piles of useless paperwork. Not only does that paperwork not help your project, it diverts people's attention from what matters most.

Lean Project Management takes a practical approach, with simple steps to use the secrets. Have your project up and running in as little as a couple of days with the eight principles. LPM includes all of the steps that I use to lead teams to complete projects in half the time, all the time with CCPM. You can be the first in your company to demonstrate the success possible with the new critical chain approach.

You will find interesting and immediately useful insights and steps, whether you are just learning project management fundamentals, or are a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) like me.

Now, here is the unique advantage of Lean Project Management.

I have built the ideas of CCPM seamlessly into Lean Project Management  from the beginning. Although I did not know about critical chain project management when I was taught effective project delivery over thirty years ago, I immediately saw how the critical chain idea explained some of the things that led to project success. I also could see immediately that many of the practitioners of the critical chain scheduling approach, and of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) did not understand some of the other necessary aspects of project management necessary for success. So I defined CCPM way back in 1997, as the way to bring together the key elements of professional project management and the critical chain scheduling and control ideas. More recently, I have studied and incorporated the complementary principles and practices of Lean manufacturing into the project delivery process. Lean Project Management provides a complete solution.

Download an excerpt.

I became frustrated with the relatively high cost of published hard cover books. While I encourage you to buy mine because of the professional quality and material it contains, I want to see the benefits of my experience with successful project delivery including CCPM and Lean reach a much broader audience. So, I decided  to write a new book that would be more accessible to a wider range of project managers managing all kinds of projects. To keep the costs down to an absolute minimum, an eBook is the only way to go.

Normal price is $39.95. Buy now for a special discount price of only $29.95!

You can use any credit card, and you do not have to be registered with PayPal any more to enjoy a secure purchase.

After you place your order, we will Email Lean Project Management  to you within three days. The file is nearly three megabytes, so be sure to use an Email to order that will handle a file of that size.

Please Email us if you wish to make a volume purchase.

I wish the the best of project success!

Larry Leach