F.I.R.E. for Innovative Project Management
Get a better understanding of how to create innovate projects well with the help of a new method. Project management is no walk in the park. You have to balance a large number of problems like the budget, your time frame, supplier contracts, as well as the concerns from your staff. Fortunately, you can look back to past projects to get a better understanding or what the best methods are or where your tough points are located.
Wait, is it even possible, though?
Suppose that you are working on a very innovative project. In this case, it may be difficult since you and your staff could possibly be heading in a direction that no one ever has. Although other projects may be fascinating, they may not be helpful, so where would you go to for help make sure that your budget is in check and deadlines are met?
This text will take you through the steps to handling innovative projects by the deadline and under budget. It’ll explain how you are supposed to hold onto your project in order to succeed. You just need to follow a couple of rational as well as logical guidelines.
The F.I.R.E. method gets you high-quality results in the fastest, most efficient way possible.
If you’ve ever done a creative project, you know that a lot of obstacles will come up. Fortunately, there’s a proven method for innovative project managers that will keep them on track. This method is called F.I.R.E.
F.I.R.E. is the acronym for Fast, Inexpensive, Restrained and Elegant. Any person can take advantage of the F.I.R.E. method in order to make their processes better and be able to accomplish their goals.
Quickly finish your project by separating it into smaller parts that can be done in a short amount of time. Large projects tend to go on and on which occasionally makes it difficult to see that you are even going anywhere. However, if you divide the work into smaller and less time time-consuming projects, you can fixate on one job at a time, thus being able to make understandable as well as attainable deadlines. In order to accomplish that, you need to follow a strict schedule. Finishing things quickly doesn’t mean that you need to work fast. You also need to fixate on quality. If you do work quickly and poorly, you’ll only be making more work for yourself in the future. Therefore, you really wouldn’t have even saved yourself too much time.
Make sure that your project remains low cost by managing a little budget and strive towards finding a solution to your problems with your head prior to using your money to fix them. Cheap is not synonymous to inexpensive because the latter focuses on efficiency on the contrary to what cheap embodies. Discover how to create the most that you can out of all that you have.
By being restrained, you learn to remain in control. When you are limited, you don’t let unanticipated situations decide which way your project will go. So, on the contrary, you need to take the reigns in the circumstance by having consistent meetings, keeping up with short schedules, making little teams as well as making sure that the budget is kept in check.
Lastly, in order to be elegant, you need to focus on simplicity. Don’t forget that less is more. If it is done right, simple projects are much better than the complicated ones since they aren’t as difficult to work on and they guarantee high-quality outcomes.
To solve a specific problem, first work on generalizing the problem to identify your general needs.
Typically, if you have a question, you go to Google for answers. Then, this search engine gives you a host of answers, regardless of whether you’re trying to figure out how to lose weight, how to fix a stove, or how to fly to space.
How exactly does Google accomplish this?
Their search engine just looks through a lot of research that is saved online, taking into account over thousands and thousands of questions that already have answers. Innovation is no different. All you need to know is what exactly you need to search for.
However, in order to find the answer to a specific problem, you initially need to generalize it. Let’s take a look at another useful method that can assist you.
TRIZ is an acronym that explains a Russian method of creative problem solving by showing how any type of technical issue can be fixed in four steps.
First of all, you need to identify that specific problem. Then, you generalize it. After, you need to search for a general answer to the general issue. Lastly, you use that general answer to create a specific solution to your specific problem. That’s TRIZ for you in summary.
Suppose you’re attempting to create a bigger engine for a stronger plane. You want it to go further as well as higher. However, you just can’t get it to take off correctly since it weighs more now. In other words, that is your specific issue. Then, you need to fixate on generalizing the issue at hand which is the problem of the airplane’s ratio of power to weight. As soon as you figure out a general answer that fixes it, you can come up with how to realize that general answer to the design of that plane in specific.
When you are trying to solve a problem, you must also identify everything that you need. The resources that you have and the newer resources that you may need to finish your job are actually not always clear. Referring back to the previous example, when you are attempting to design the engine of an airplane, you most likely have a large variety of materials available to you, but figuring out which ones you actually need and that would give you the best result is tricky. However, when you identify that you actually need a lighter material, you can now fixate your energy on locating it.
Avoid racking up extra costs and annoying delays by sticking to a set schedule and a limited budget.
Have you ever attempted to experiment with one of your favorite recipes by altering a few things and as a result, made something that was just not edible. In some cases, it may be better to just stay with the first recipe. Innovative projects are no different. If you’ve set yourself a time frame and a budget, try your best not to stray from your original plan since you’ll just end up making things more difficult for you in the future by failing to stay on time or on budget.
American engineers started to work on the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jet in 1981. This advanced machinery, made to go against Soviet technology, was actually only ever finished in December of 2005, a year after the Soviet Union had fallen.
What happened?
This project had gotten into some problems in 1989 when the designers had moved the deadline by 6 months. They claimed that they wanted it to be “perfect” so they just continued to adjust features but as a result, more expenses were adding up along with even more delays. Therefore, it kept on changing in order to make room for the added features and thus the delays just continued to add up until the project was late by over a decade.
You can stay clear of this, though, by not going off both schedule and budget as soon as you’ve fixated the date and time. Don’t try to put every feature that you can into an item and project. Attempt to create something that solves your specific issue or else your project will just become pointless as did the F-22.
During the designers hard, but useless work on the F-22, the new invention, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), today known as the drone, had outranked it. The drone is a great illustration of the F.I.R.E. method since it’s fast, inexpensive, restrained, and elegant.
The drone prospered in areas that the F-22 did not since the entire project was fixated on answering a certain question quickly and on a tight budget. For example, the Dragon Eye drone’s only function is to be a surveillance camera. It also didn’t cost too much to make. In fact, the Dragon Eye can be made for about $60,000.
NASA missions focus on simplifying and accelerating projects, innovating only when necessary.
When you think about the word “innovation”, you may automatically think of the words “complicated” and “expensive”, but that isn’t really true. NASA, the US space agency, can elaborate why.
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has put in motion a lot of innovative missions since it is, after all, dedicated to making projects easier and quicker. For example, in 1999, NASA started on the spacecraft project, Stardust, which was aimed at getting particles from the tails of comets in the galaxy and take them back in order to research them. NASA gave it a tight timeframe and budget. Fortunately, Stardust was finished on time and a couple million dollars under budget.
How did they do it, though?
The team had a simple set of mission requisites and they fixated on the three most crucial jobs: encountering the comet, getting 1,000 particles, and taking the particles back home. There were obviously other goals, too, like taking pictures of the comet, but those goals were just helpful, not mandatory. In other words, this was second to the project’s actual three main goals.
Stardust’s victory also demonstrates how crucial it is to fixate innovation to certain needs. NASA could have created the parts for the Stardust project from scratch, but the staff just chose to keep it easier instead. Ken Atkins, the project manager, had made the costs lower by taking advantage of tools that had been created for older jobs. For example, Stardust’s Motorola Radio was actually first created for the 1998 Mars Surveyor mission.
By using already established tools, the staff could put their energy into creating solutions that they did not yet have. As a result, the only true innovation that they had for the project was a material that collected particles, which is now known as an aerogel. The other parts of the project were just creatively utilized innovations from previous projects!
When it comes to true innovation, less is always more.
Think about how weird it would be to put on every item of clothing that you have. It’s close to impossible, but even if you were to succeed, you’d just look crazy. It’s much better to just keep things simpler: just one shirt and one pair of pants.
Innovation is no different, yet again! You are definitely going to have more bumps in the road if you force most of the workload on yourself, or on the project in this case. Keeping things simpler doesn’t only look better, but it’s also less expensive and quicker. Take, for example, Google’s Chromebook. This laptop has only the most commonly used features of Google such as searching the web or using Google Drive. Although Google could have put every feature possible into it, it would’ve just cost them a lot more time and money. It just didn’t make sense to add more expenses and delays.
Stormdraining is when you attempt to come up with the perfect balance of intricacy. On the contrary to brainstorming, you need to abandon ideas or functions that just don’t benefit your project enough. Stormdraining occurs when you try to find the middle point between simplicity and intricacy. This part will differ between each project. Begin by taking apart your item, feature by feature. If it still works without that given feature, then remove another one. Keep doing that until you can’t get rid of any more features that don’t have an effect on the item’s function. This will take some time, as well as creativity, but it is a lot more effective than creating an item that is too complicated and costly for no reason.
Therefore, don’t forget to be critical towards your project. Remove whatever takes up your resources and doesn’t give you much back in return. Instead, fixate your energy into creating the tools and items that you truly need.
Final Summary
In order for innovation to be effective, you need to put your efforts and resources into the most crucial jobs. You need to work quickly in order for your project to remain inexpensive and you need to stick to your plan to stay on schedule and within your budget. Strive to create something that is elegant and not too complicated. When you unify your energy with the F.I.R.E. method, not only will you finish on time, but you’ll create something of better quality as well.