What to Measure for Success in Lean System Engineering Programs?

The system engineering literature acknowledges that lean principles foster the achievement of higher program performance. However in the literature it is not clear how exactly the six lean principles affect the performance of the systems engineering programs. This paper addresses this gap by discussing about the core benefits derived from the implementation of each lean principle. Main contribution of this paper is the proposal –through a deep literature investigation refined through a series of focus groups with the Lean in Program Management Community of Practice (MIT-PMI-INCOSE) – of a list of metrics to be considered in order to measure the performance affected by the introduction of a list of 43 Lean Enablers. Only when measuring the current situation of the systems engineering program in fact, it is possible to direct improvement efforts. Further steps of authors’ research are direct to understand how the collected metrics could practically and effectively support the lean journey within system engineering programs.