In the new business economy, project management has become a central way for undertaking several of the business activities. One of the increasing and most significant concerns with projects is that, projects are behind schedule, over budget and show unsatisfactory performance in terms quality and customer satisfaction. In the last few decades the manufacturing industry successfully improved quality and productivity, by using the concepts of lean thinking. The thesis explores the relevance of lean concepts in project management and how lean concepts can improve project productivity. The qualitative method is used in this study. Further, a systematic approach was used to identify the relevance of lean concepts in project management. The qualitative data was collected using an interview with a project consultant. The results of the study reveal that all concepts of lean thinking are relevant to project management in specific kinds of projects. However, a greater degree of understanding and interpretation of each concept is needed when applying lean thinking in project management. Furthermore, some of the concepts have to be interpreted with caution when they are used in innovative projects. In general, it is found that, lean project management can improve project productivity. The findings suggest that the lean concepts can reduce cost and time which are two key measures of project success. The results of this study can be seen as a tentative framework intended to stimulate further discussion about integrating lean thinking in project and program management.

This study looks at the differences in lean project management between projects done in the public sector and projects done in the private sector. The private sector consist of companies around Sweden, while municipalities are representing the public sector in this study. This study is based on the understanding that the lean philosophy can have advantages for the efficiency of project management, both for the private and the public sector, knowing that there are differences in the nature of these organizations. This thesis begins with an introduction that explains the theory that is important for this research, and that describes the research gap that has been found. The research gap is the basis for the research questions. After defining the research questions, an examination has been done on existing literature about the concepts of lean, project management, project managers, and lean project management. Prior research gives ideas about the challenges project managers encounter, and shows in what way lean can influence the efficiency of projects. As part of this qualitative research, and with an inductive approach, 12 semi-structured interviews have been conducted. During this interviews, project managers and persons with a connection to projects in the different organization were asked to describe projects in their organizations. This study is exploratory and has a cross-sectional design as the center of attention was on different organizations from both the private and the public sector in different parts of Sweden. In the analysis the results of the interviews are categorized and interpreted. The results show that projects are used in every organization, making use of, in almost every case, a project model which makes sure that different projects are run in similar ways. Although different organizations make use of the principles of lean, no organization is implementing the ideas completely. Major differences that have been found are differences in the background of the project manager, the level of standardization of projects, and differences in efficiency that in many situations are caused by legislation. It became clear that projects in the private sector are organized in a stricter way, with experienced project managers that follow project models strictly. In the public sector projects are mostly led by project managers that are interested in a certain project, and in those organizations project models are not followed strictly. As for lean projects, we have found no real evidence that any organization is currently having projects organized according to the lean principles. This can be expected however, seeing that lean project management is a generally unexplored part of the lean philosophy.

Traditional methods of project management are not appropriate for complex projects anymore. Since projects are becoming increasingly complex and uncertain, interaction between activities and resources is growing in ways not considered by these methods. Nowadays, managers need more agile project management methods that are able to recognize and deal with uncertainty and to produce the expected results. Lean project management, the most recent approach of lean methodology, appears as an alternative approach capable of dealing with complexity and uncertainty. The latest investigations in the field show that traditional methods are still adequate for simple projects, while lean methods are more appropriate for complex projects. This thesis aims to investigate the nature of lean project management and to examine project risk management processes so that managers can assess the complexity of projects before their beginning and decide which method to apply in order to manage them.