Embrace the Chaos, Reap the Rewards

16 March 2010

New Innovation Project Management Methods

Most practitioners working in the field of innovation might agree that to create something new and worthwhile, you sometimes need an element of chaos, if not actual destruction.

You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, as the saying goes.

The challenge, of course, is to put a structure around that chaos to make it manageable, but always without suffocating collaboration, intuition, spark, flair, serendipity, laughter, spontaneity and other qualities all of which form part of the magical mix that is creative invention.

And while a great deal is talked about managing the creative process itself, generating ideas, brainstorming and problem solving, it seems almost counter-intuitive at times to try to process manage these activities in a traditional way.

Yet if we are to harness the benefits of innovation and reap the rewards, then effective project management from end-to-end of the innovation life-cycle is a must.

Of course, this brings new challenges that traditional PM methodologies may not be best suited to.

Many are already morphing and splintering into hybrid forms to meet specific project activity types. For example, in the web and software development arena, Agile and Scrum and XP are taking hold and either replacing or maybe just coexisting with more traditional methods such as Prince 2, ITIL or RAD.

However, few of these seem suitable for project managing innovation, which brings even greater uncertainty than normal projects and with this unique challenges.

It seems clear then, that although we have an available toolkit of mature and proven methodologies at our disposal, the right methodology for innovation project management is still a work-in-progress.

For that reason at Acunity we are now developing new innovation project management methodologies with some of our partners and clients.

Watch this space...

For more information, please contact Simon Atherley on 01274 429186