A Lean Six Sigma (LSS) Project Management Improvement Model

Current economic crisis raises the constant demand for profitable solutions that allow organizations to gain competitive advantage. For this reason, more and more companies search for management methodologies that allow them to improve their products and/or service characteristics, perfect their processes, decrease costs, improve the capital’s profitability and costumers’ satisfaction. This have been attempted through Lean Management and Six Sigma integrated approaches in their managerial and production processes in which, Lean focus mainly on the waste elimination, using simple and visual techniques whenever possible and Six Sigma on the control and processes variability reduction, using statistical tools for this purpose. The present article proposes a Lean Six Sigma (LSS) project management improvement model supported by the DMAIC cycle and integrating an enlarged and adapted set of statistical tools, given the nature of the project management main variables and the involved processes. The proposed model was tested in a Portuguese telecommunication company context which project management processes system are based on Project Management Institute (PMI) standards. The model allowed identifying company’s main project management problems and associated causes and the selection of the causes to be first attended. The proposed model also permitted to systematically address the actions and solutions to be implemented in order to keep, in the long run, the continuous improvement of the project management processes in the organization. Keywords: Lean Management, Six Sigma tools, Lean Six Sigma, DMAIC, Project Management