Innovation and creativity in practical experiance

Innovation and creativity are mantras for the enterprises. Many classical enterprises look envying to Google and Co. and want to generate the same results. Many consultants promise to know the secret and urge to start innovation programs.
I believe  that creativity can be catalyzed or stimulated, but there are some framework conditions. I am not going to repeat the well known methods, but only give hints of critical points for the practices.

Agile development

1. General 

• Strict structures and processes kill the creativity. Leave always a little randomness.

• Missing structure and processes in company cause that the team start organizing them, which is waste of resources. The infrastructure are the tools, so they must be present.

• Teams are always happy with sustained position of of the management.

• To reduce the destructive klatch, the team needs to have enough to do. 

• To reduce the psychological pressure and the following mistakes, the team needs time for predefined creative breaks. The members gain distance on the issue, may look from at higher perspective. This is very typical for arts (painting, music etc), so the same for engineering.
  

2. Team building

 Core rule: the team must be as flat as possible; without any hierarchy like: architects, decision maker, solution engineering, project manager etc. 
Idea: Creativity is stimulated in self organizing structured. The natural properties of the members are important and not the titles. If someone is innovative let hear him. Naturally, there must be sufficient skills for the task.
Beside the team member, there are

• product owner - defines the requirements and accepts the solution. The product owner needs to start understanding difficulties of the team. This is very important that he is not only visitor, than he needs to understand deeply what the team does.
• organizer (scrum master) takes care on administrative and organizational work.

 

Classical problems

Team members still keep titles and positions: For example: I am project manager, ergo I lead and decide. Definitely not: scrum  master is not project manger and does not decide. I am architect, ergo I say how to be build.
Manager try to influence the team: I give you the budget, I am VIP so I desire how and when. There is not way to avoid this, but it decreases the creativity. There must be a balance.
Some people can not express in perfect way they are right. The best presentation is not the optimal solution always.

3. Susses at any costs

Classical manger want success at any price on every project. Success means service delivery on time. Creativity is not really predictable in this sense.
The only way to achieve success in classical understanding is to start many activities in parallel or wait sufficiently on one activity.  If you start many activities, it must be expected that only 30% will be success.
Following, I draw the deliveries in stages (sprints) relative to the target. They are self explaining.

4. Adjust the targets

The target may be adjusted at some point of development. The product owner is part of the team and he may see some potential in not originally expected objects. That is why he need daily to participate and gain experience. (not only marketing presentations)

 

5. Permanent Feedback and net Tasks

The permanent feedback and attention to the management is very important and motivation for the team. The team must be always fully loaded with interesting tasks.