BOOK: Lean Project Management

My review of Lean Project Management is in the February 2008 issue of the Agile Journal.

Lean Project Management: Eight Principles for Success, is actually a second edition of the eBook Eight Secrets to Supercharge your Project with CCPM. It is available both in hardcopy and eBook formats. Lawrence Leach (www.advanced-projects.com) is perhaps best known as author of one of the most comprehensive texts on the subject of Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM). In this book, subtitled "Combining CCPM and Lean tools to accelerate project results," the author essentially integrates Lean Thinking into CCPM, along with elements from the Theory of Constraints (TOC) and PMBoK/PMI. Leach calls the result Lean Project Management or LPM.

... All in all, I found Lean Project Management to be a fairly quick read providing a good overview of some TOC and CCPM fundamentals and how they align with Lean thinking, as well as how Lean thinking can be applied to some of more traditional PMBoK methods. Someone looking for a more comprehensive reference on TOC thinking processes and CCPM would probably be better off reading Goldratt's books, the work of William H. Dettmer, and the 2^nd edition of Leach's Critical Chain Project Management. But for those wanting the bird's eye overview with a brief "zoom in" on some of the details, along with how Lean thinking helps tie it all together with some of the more traditional project management methods, Lawrence Leach's Lean Project Management is a nice overview text describing some of the most powerful aspects of TOC and CCPM through "Lean eyes for the PM guy!"

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