Sustaining Projects
What Are Sustaining Projects?
Sustaining work differs from typical Kanban tasks — it's often urgent, cross-functional, and scattered across various systems and stakeholders.
Common Types
- Cost-out efforts — Reducing product/service costs
- Quality-driven design changes — Improving reliability
- Obsolescence management — Replacing discontinued components
- Customer complaints — Addressing satisfaction issues
- Documentation updates — Maintaining accuracy
- Training materials — Keeping content current
Why They Matter
- Critical to customer satisfaction
- Essential for product quality
- Required for operational continuity
- Often regulatory or compliance-driven
The Challenge with Sustaining Work
Characteristics That Make It Difficult
- Smaller than full-scale projects — Don't fit traditional PM methods
- More interrupt-driven — Arrive unpredictably
- Cross-disciplinary — Require multiple skill sets
- Rarely tracked formally — Fall between organizational cracks
Common Problems
- Teams overload from unmanaged demand
- Priorities blur without clear frameworks
- Strategic effort buried under reactive noise
- No visibility into overall sustaining portfolio