Innovation

How do I innovate? Do I need to invent something new? How do I measure success?

As a developer, I’m often looked upon to use technology to improve processes. This to a degree is innovation but you don’t necessarily need IT solutions to innovate something. You just need a good imagination.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
Albert Einstein

Often when I oversee a process it’s easy for me to offer suggested improvements mainly because I’m neutral about it. I bring an outsider’s perspective. Becoming too close to any system can lead to not seeing the wood for the trees. I’ve compiled a simple suggested list of things to do which could help define your next project. By looking at something that needs improving you can follow the list and hopefully identify how to innovate it.

1. Issues with the current process
Make a list of every single bugbear you have with the existing process. Anything that is causing the process to be slow or inefficient. Every small thing no matter how trivial is worth noting down. Sometimes the small things are the quickest things to fix and have a larger positive impact than you may think.

2. Goals of the new process
What are the ultimate measurable goals that can be used to assess the success of the new process? Some examples may be the time to process a record, the number of people required for the process and the cost to run the process. Make sure you mark down the values of the current system so have something to measure against.

3. Forget everything you know
If you were to start again today, how would you set up the process? Think in terms of ultimate solutions. Don’t think about any constraints, just consider a perfect world and a perfect system. Does the new system avoid the issues listed in part 1? Good, then you’re ready for step 4.

4. Feasibility
Carry out a feasibility study to see how much of the ultimate solution is possible. Looks at budget and time restraints. Think about the downtime of existing systems and how you can deploy the new solution.

5. Build
I would recommend using an Agile approach in delivering the solution. Aiming to get quick wins out there into the real world ASAP. Look at 3rd party solutions to hit the ground running. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. By introducing these changes quickly you can get buy-in from the users.

6. Assess
Once you’ve completed the changes that budget and resource has allowed, take a look at your initial goals. Did you hit most of them? Yes, then it was a success. Cross-reference your ‘perfect solution’. Maybe you already have an idea about your next project may be.

Processes, technology and requirements are always in constant flux. You should look to re-assess any system at regular intervals to see if you can make further improvements. Remember 3rd parties may be able to help in the future if they can’t at the moment.

I hope you find this useful.