FIRE

Publisher's Summary

Why do some programs deliver their product under cost, while others bust their budget? Why do some deliver ahead of schedule, while others experience endless delays? And most importantly, which products work better - the quick and thrifty or the slow and expensive? Which situation leads to superior equipment?

In this story-filled blend of quirky pop culture and practical engineering insight, Dan Ward presents an entertaining and useful framework for pursuing rapid, frugal innovation.

FIRE has something for everyone: strategic concepts leaders can use as they cast a vision, actionable principles for managers as they make business decisions, and practical tools for workers as they design, build, assess, and test new products. This remarkable book will make you laugh, make you think, and equip you to leverage the power of constraints. You'll learn how to:

• Build strategies for speed that enhance accountability and ensure your products are well aligned with market needs
• Design your organizations, products, and processes with thrift in mind, solving problems with intellectual capital instead of financial capital
• Unleash the power of small teams, using short schedules, tight budgets, short meetings, and short documents
• Streamline your designs and cut through unnecessary, unproductive layers of bureaucracy

With unflinching candor, Ward also shows how the FIRE method can lead to failure. Taking a deep look at several negative outcomes, he show how to make failures optimal rather than epic.

Tech professionals and curious amateurs alike will come away with a deeper understanding of innovation. Plus there's a funny story about a dishwasher that just might change the way you buy major appliances.

©2014 Dan Ward (P)2016 Dan Ward

FIRE

If you could sum up FIRE in three words, what would they be?

A good book to read and have some good reference.. In some ways it feels like another recap of how things were done

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

Closer to 3.5 Stars, Above Average

This review is for the audiobook version of FIRE: How Fast, Inexpensive, Restrained, and Elegant Methods Ignite Innovation. I’m fascinated by business books about the art and/or science of innovation. While not as entertaining as Creativity, Inc., by Ed Catmull, FIRE is an above average attempt at how businesses and individuals can follow a set of processes to not just get on time, on scope, on budget, but to get faster, better, cheaper. This is more of a 3.5 stars, to be honest, but there was enough good stuff here that I may have to revisit the book later.

Drawing on his experience in the military, Ward, does a fine job making the material understandable and applicable. Before reading (listening) I didn’t equate the military with innovation or innovative processes, but Ward shows example after example of some of their finer achievements in modern years.

The narrator, David Loving, was just OK. I didn’t love him, I didn’t hate him. I almost wish that it had been read by someone like “The Gunny”, R. Lee Erney (Drill Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket).

***Full Disclosure: I received this book for free in exchange for my honest and unbiased review

If You Have a Research and Development Department,

you need this book. Very insightful information on how less money and less people can make a project more worthwhile. Seems like common sense takes a backseat when you have too many people working on a project, many are too afraid to look bad by giving their input. This was a review copy, thanks. Narrator does an awesome job. :)

excellent work!

this is one of the rare books that is both insightful and fun. Mr Ward's work has definitely made a mark in his profession. Aspiring and experienced program/project managers should be emboldened by one of your own raising the bar.