Managing Innovative Projects

Alan Webb, Project Management Consultant and visiting lecturer at the Surrey Management School

1. Introduction. 2. Innovation and the creation of new products; Innovation as away of survival; the process of innovation product life-cycles; case study: product life-cycles; sources of ideas for innovative products; strategies for innovation; sources of funds for developing projects; summary; contacts. 3. Getting organized; Project management; project management and project structures; leadership and the individual; the structure of the project team; summary. 4. Planning: the way ahead; organization for planning; the role of planning in a development project; setting out the project plan; example: prototype scheduling and test; scheduling activities with limited resources; network analysis; establishing activity durations; example: analysis of a simple network; expected event dates; example: prototype manufacture and test; activity on node, or precedence networks; alternative logic; networks in practice; summary. 5. Success by design; factors that influence design; the design cycle; simultaneous engineering; quality by design; taguchi methods; example: test for lowest fuel consumption; design reviews; configuration management; in perspective; structures engineering data; summary. 6. The cost and value of products; value for money; design-to-cost; value engineering; example: cost-to-function analysis for an automatic washing machine; summary. 7. Managing the flow of materials; planning the acquisition process; build sequences; control and coordination; example: feasible output calculation; construction of a line-of-balance chart; computerized materials management; case study: a computerized materials management system; leading the materials management group; summary. 8. Progress, performance and control; the project control cycle; the slip diagram; example: completion of a set of drawings; case example: slip diagram for the BAe/GEC Nimrod AEW 3 Project; the origins of formalized cost and schedule control; example: estimate of the outcome of a project at the mid-point of it''s life; the organizational impact of cost-performance measurement; work breakdown structures; organization for cost-performance measurement; measuring project progress; contemporary software; cost-performance measurement in practice; progress reports; lines of communication; reviews; summary. 9. Planning and implementing the production programme; types of production; economic aspects of tooling; example: acquisition of a special machine; total annual cost analysis; the learning process; case example: time reductions for fabricated aircraft panels; example: batch costs for vehicle chassis; example: learning rates with two shifts; cost reductions attributable to learning; example: cost reductions where an incentive scheme is in operation; the rate of production progress; the measurement of production progress; example: the build up of production output; management responses to low output rates, production readiness; summary. 10. The economics of projects; estimating the project cost; estimating methods; Match" parametric software; case study: product cost estimate; justifying the project; example: project investment decision; the profit potential of new products; example: profitable sales figures for a new project; how much s spent on innovative projects. summary. 11. Managing the risks; the nature of risks; risk analysis; case example: product and market strategy options; example: variability in durations of a development project; new developments; in perspective; risk management; summary. 12. Some commercial aspects; prime contracts; forms of contract; fixed-price contracts; example: contract price adjustment; liquidated damages; intellectual property rights; summary. 13. Software for project management; contemporary software; developments in technology; products available; some factors in choosing project software; summary. Appendix: Products and vendors. Further reading."