You should now have a small number
of very well-thought-out and well-socialized ideas to begin testing in your
work area.
The need for testing
Despite the amount of thought you
have put into it, if your ideas are truly novel, you cannot know for certain
how and if they will work. In the Opportunities section of the Enhancement
Checklist (in the Select phase), we strongly suggested that you consider
carefully developing a small trial or demonstration of the idea in order to
build confidence and to work through any unexpected problems.
Don't implement!
So, rather than thinking about an
"implementation" plan for your ideas, think about a plan for initially testing
the ideas on a small scale and in a safe way in order to refine them and gain
confidence in their effectiveness. This is an essential part of what the
innovation literature refers to as "rapid prototyping."
The concept of small-scale testing
is integral to all innovation, improvement and change work. The basic approach
is often summarized as PDSA:
Considerations in designing small test of change
Obviously, the details of how to construct a small test of an idea will vary considerably based on the nature of
the idea itself. But here are some tips to get you started in your thinking:
Key Point: The measure of the
success for a test is whether or not you learned something. The test is
successful even if the idea itself fails, as long as you learn something. If
all you ever do is test successful ideas, then you may not be thinking
differently enough!