I’ve seen a few efforts that were authorized to “throw away the book” and do whatever seemed right.

While I personally love this approach, most of these efforts “went intuitive” where management and individuals just did what they felt was right.

In all the cases I’ve observed, they’ve usually just relearned the good reasons for things they discarded such as requirements traceability or why we needed to periodically talk with the customer.

In my experience most huge successes were associated with leveraging, optimizing or streamlining the current process (in a few but key ways), and not by throwing it all away and learning a new approach or having no real approach at all.

See also The Perfect Project Management Methodology

I’m not saying this can’t succeed, as we’ve done it. But it has had a much lower probability of success than someone who has just a couple of good, possibly radical, ideas they wanted to try.

For more, see The Leap From Mediocrity To The Exceptional Is Shorter Than We Think

Don’t throw away the book. Instead, free folks to innovate and build upon what we already have.

Are you doing things smartly or just letting everyone run amok under the guise of innovation?