Eliminate overproduction in projects

Overproduction leads to other problems – also in projects.

In previous posts we identified eight symptoms of waste in projects. Now we take a more detailed view on the worst of them: overproduction.

Overproduction is sometimes difficult to see in information projects. In manufacturing overproduction causes large stocks of unfinished products that are waiting for the next phase or orders. It’s easy to see, but often ignored. But even if in projects overproduction is often first invisible, but it’s there and it is also the main reason for slipping deadlines and rising costs in all projects.

 Are you overproducing?

If your projects start having these symptoms, there is a good chance, that your project is going to go over budget and deadline:

• You spend a lot of time in meetings during the planning phase
• You fill a lot of different kind of project documents that don’t create anything that you can sell to the customers. You just fill papers and spreadsheets
• You get frequent requests to give status updates about how you are doing
• Your planning phase exceeds its deadline, because you want so many features in your new product or service.
• You try to give detailed estimates of your teams time budget for the next month – or the next year.

All these symptoms tell you, that your project model is causing a lot of documents, that are either going to be totally useless or they will need a lot of extra work during the project.

Find the root cause

If you want to get rid of these, you need to identify the root causes behind these symptoms. In our experience these usually are:

• Old school project model that focuses on planning. Today you usually don’t have so much time for planning – you need to get things done faster.
• Your steering group doesn’t really understand what you are doing. That is why you are creating documents – to get them understand the concept.
• You have not limited the scope enough. Or if you are creating a new product or service, you haven’t tested the concept with customers. That’s why you are creating a lot of features they don’t really want or need.
• Your project tools are outdated which causes you to write the same documents and information multiple times. This is especially true with status reports. Why write separate reports, when they can be automatically created while you work.
• It just is so nice to stay on the “planning comfort zone”…

Eliminate overproduction 

How do you get rid of overproduction?

• First – we don’t think, that all documentation is bad and that you should do your product specifications sloppy. But it usually is more productive to have a good discussions and collaborate to get a common understanding than it is to write tons of paper to each other. Some written documentation is necessary to get new project members onboard swiftly.
• Your steering group should consist of people who know what you are doing and are capable of helping the project. They should be interested in the project, so that they can work as a functional project organ instead of just wanting outdated status reports.
• You should use online project tools where you only need to write things once. Use also a tool that also creates a log of all changes in documents. That way you don’t have to have separate change management with documents.
• If you are creating a new product or service, start with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). That way you can focus on those features that are important for your customers and skip the rest.
• Move from planning to doing as soon as possible. That way you can also start tracking achievements faster.
• It’s usually useless to create detailed timebudgets for project members. They are wrong after one week and they are a pain to keep updated. When you need something done you usually know if the needed person can do it or not.
• You can determine links between tasks on workpackage level, but if you try to create a detailed map of all connected activities, you usually create a document that is a exhausting to create and breathtaking to update. If you want to do this fast, you can do a Value Stream Map with post-it notes in one afternoon.

If you follow these guidelines, you can usually cut your project costs and get things done on time.

Share your thoughts if you agree or disagree….

Tommi and the Akselworks team.

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