Down to Earth Rocket Science
Intuitive Project Management (IPM) is structured for R&D and projects or programs designed to generate solutions, optimize a process, or create. A superior result is always one criteria. In practice, all projects routinely implement some form of IPM as part and parcel to daily problem solving.
Note that traditional and systems project management methods are best for most projects. When using IPM, elements that are normally fixed become flexible. Flexibility and subjectivity is managed throughout the intuitive project.
Normally fixed WBS elements at any level can become variables subject to refinement, replacement, movement, or deletion. Change is managed. Verification is via computer modeling, similitude or full scale testing, analysis, or inspection. Degrees of improvement or degradation are measurable for all parameters with respect to specified quality metrics.
An example of IPM occurred during Apollo 13. Solutions were sought, found, and implemented on the fly. Using imagination under given constraints, the collective knowledge, data, and available materials and tools were intuitively selected, implemented, and replaced until the ad hoc formed into a hierarchy of solutions that ultimately configured to work. Viable solutions were repeatedly found, implemented, and the crew was saved.
IPM requires one to manage the application of their imagination and intuition for a superior result given constraints. Being able to do so for a desirable result in emergency situations requires significant discipline and training. From the work of test pilots, astronauts, soldiers, and emergency response leaders and crews, this human capacity reveals itself time and again at an individual level.
Combining IPM, skill variety, and disciplined training is a decisive strength. Management of skills, training, materials, tools, and coordination, a team can deal with solar wind, asteroids, natural disasters, and cures for disease, i.e. situations where challenges are in flux. The key is to create and manage change well for superior results.
Practitioners capture the desirable unexpected from imagination and intuition for best results on a regular basis. IPM is used to develop flexible PM, modeling, or analysis tools to use and then use them to reach creative objectives.
A complex example: Development of strategies to statistically manage hierarchical inputs within current AI industry efforts to reverse engineer the brain. AI software/hardware complexity management tools would be developed first. These tools would manage increasing depth and dimensions of systems of systems elements. Another example: Spacecraft avionics - there are countless ways to accomplish a full set. As a rule of thumb, the most elegant path, if not the simplest, will be the most robust result.
Managing change well enough to stay out of - or successfully manage - any quagmire and reach simple elegant solutions is beyond a shadow of doubt the skill that mankind must hone well to succeed as a species. I highly recommend that each young engineer make doing so a priority early in their career and stick with it lifelong.
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INTUITIVE PROJECT MANAGEMENT
