No abstract

While traditional project management advocates sticking to a baseline plan (composed of budget, schedule and specifications) this paper suggests a new planning approach that includes re-evaluation and optimizes the project's value while allowing strategic changes in the project scope, budget and schedule. The proposed optimization allows taking into account not only the project, but also the long term impact of changes on cash-flows, product reliability, firm reputation, and customer satisfaction. Such changes are not part of the traditional project management approach of sticking to the baseline and eliminating a scope creep. Such a new approach enables dealing with many important changes that occur during long term projects. This is particularly important in projects with large amount of uncertainty where new knowledge is revealed or discovered during the project lifespan, and significant events occur that impact the project or its deliverables. The paper analyses the factors that make this approach desirable and the type of projects where this approach would be especially attractive.

We generate new product ideas using algorithms which manipulate formally conceptual structures. These structures are abstract closed congurations composed of discrete elements which represent parts or properties of the products and of their immediate environment. The algorithms are assembled of a very limited number of fundamental operations acting on the elements. We present some successful eld applications of the method carried out in leading international companies as well as an experiment providing quantitative proof of its superiority o v er usual ideas search.

The paper presents SIT (Structured Inventive Thinking) — a structured method for enhancing creative problem solving in engineering design. The method is a three step procedure: problem reformulation, general search strategy selection, and an application of idea provoking techniques. The most innovative part of the method is the problem reformulation stage. The given problem is modified through the application of objectively defined and empirically tested set of sufficient conditions for creative solutions. The paper describes the sufficient conditions and the empirical study that demonstrates their appropriateness. Then the whole SIT mechanism is presented with illustrative examples.