THE STUDY OF LEAN AND AGILE PROJECT MANAGEMENT APPROACHES IN THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SERVICES DEPARTMENT AT QATAR UNIVERSITY

Abstract

The goal of this project is to study the current process that is being carried out at Qatar University's Information Technology Services department when it comes to handling internal project development. This is done by looking at the subject through the lens of agile and lean project management principles. These principles organize the steps in the process such that there is minimal waste to get better efficiency. A tool that is often associated with lean thinking principles was relied on for this project. The tool is the Value Stream Mapping (VSM) tool. This tool helps in showcasing the relations between the steps, the required process time for each one of them, as well as the lead time for each step. From the VSM of the current process, some areas of improvement were determined. After that, the future VSM was created to foresee how the process will be if the adjustments were made. As a result of this study, the processing time was changed from 42,325 minutes to 29,795 minutes. The lead time was also reduced from 118 days to 81 days. The improvement rates were found to be 29.60% and 31.35% for the processing time and the lead time respectively. These rates were achieved by combining some steps of the process, modifying the nature of some steps, eliminating unnecessary steps, and finally some time reduction in some steps to avoid waste.