Project Management

Chapter 6 : Project Idea Generation and Screening

Generating Project Ideas

Creativity and Idea Generation

Stages of Creativity
Individual Creativity
Group Creativity

Scanning the Environment

Corporate Appraisal

Searching for New Project Ideas

Initial Screening

Project Rating Index

Sources of Positive Net Present Value

Chapter Summary

Project ideas are generated through different sources like customers, competitors, and employees. Sometimes they are discovered through accident. Project manager should try to enhance people’s creativity, scan the entire business environment and appraise the company's strengths and weaknesses to generate a large number of ideas. Techniques like attribute listing, brainstorming, and delphi technique are useful for improving the creativity at individual and group level.

The project managers should analyze the business environment that consists of the economic sector, the governmental sector, the technological sector, the socio-demographic sector, the competition sector and the supplier sector. Once a pool of ideas has been generated, the project manager should carefully screen them. The Project Rating Index method helps managers eliminate poor ideas in the initial screening process. In the case of financial projects, the project manager should assess the NPV of project ideas.

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