Brainstorming on Demand

Technical feasibility is usually based on verified data and should contain sufficient information so that the evaluation may be made into financial statements. In other words, technical feasibility tends to review existing technology in well known conditions. Sometimes, we need to make a decision about future functions of a product or possible environment, which is not always obvious. Guessing may help, the only question is "how?"

What do we normally do when we have no information about something? We begin by thinking, this may be with a group of people. In a technical world it is also called Joint Application Development or a JAD session, that sometimes resemble brainstorming. There is nothing wrong with this creativity boosting method, the only problem brainstorming has no sign where to go next on the "idea crossroad."

The alternative is TRIZ, also known as Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, that is based on a strict algorithmic approach. TRIZ was created about 60 years ago and originally aimed to solve engineering tasks. Among other algorithms, TRIZ contains so called "thinking inertia overcome methods." Those methods, where "reduction - extension" is one of them and explained below, were specifically created to overview a problem from different angles. Real usage adopts about ten of these methods, and it is possible and even recommended to mix them all when observing a system.

Before we continue, let us review couple of examples:

Two Mars rovers have been working for a second year now instead of 90 days as it was planned before. Several on-board software updates have happened during these years. "Spirit" and "Opportunity" are sending red planet's landscape photos, so we can also consider rovers as remote image editors with the extremely slow connection speed with end-users.

The Microsoft Office family initially was created initially as single user software. Historically, authors wrote the content first and then show it to an editor. No one expected that the new computer era would allow text to be revised by several people simultaneously. Today we can. We are also able to share our desktop within a group, use more than one monitor at the time and send our application to a remote workstation.