Ideation tools

Abstract

The ideation or pre-project phase is often underrated in project, program or portfolio management.

Ideation can be most valuable in the planning phase of any project, program or portfolio, when the management plans (project charter) have to be created.

Ideation is an important process, that in essence means the generation of unexpected ideas via reframing any challenge. It can be thought of as an alternative or almost synonym to the commonly known process of idea generation called brainstorming.

Ideation focuses a lot on designing radical alternative processes or products, with a focus on opening up the possibilities for a large quantity of ideas.

Big idea

Ideation is a very important process in project management as it is about exploring a large quantity of ideas and a diversity among these ideas in different stages in a project life cycle. Ideas are required to tackle challenges, and figuring out solutions that satisfy many different stakeholders and can be designed in a sustainable way. Ideation comes with a lot of phases, that can be used in projects to facilitate the creation of creative solutions. These phases are brainstorming, how-we-might questions, stoke, etc.

Application

The application of ideation is via the phases. These phases are: (listing of all the phase with explanations for each)

Limitations

Cannot be used in other parts of a project/program/portfolio life cycle, because it deals with coming up with ideas to solve a problem. When executing a plan, there is not much wiggle room left to find new solutions.