Dan Ward - FIRE: How Fast, Inexpensive, Restrained, and Elegant Methods Ignite Innovation

To Kim, Bethany, and Jenna

CONTENTS

In 2003, I coined the acronym FIST (Fast, Inexpensive, Simple, Tiny) to describe the US militarys approach to high-speed, low-cost innovation. This method uses constraints to foster creativity and, through a thoughtful application of speed, thrift, simplicity, and restraint, has a track record of producing best-in-class and first-in-class technologies. Of course the Pentagon doesnt always build new equipment this way, but FIST was my attempt to document how the military technology community functions when it is at its best.

Over the next decade, I refined the idea in a series of journal articles, conference presentations, and superhero comics, incorporating lessons from government entities like NASA and companies like Apple. My buddies and I implemented this approach on half a dozen projects, and along the way we built a wider network of unindicted co-conspirators who used FIST methods and techniques to build everything from spacecraft to software. FIST was the central topic of my masters degree thesis at the Air Force Institute of Technology and became a defining feature of my military career.

As my time in uniform came to an end, it seemed a reboot was in order. After much thought and discussion, a new acronym emerged: FIRE (Fast, Inexpensive, Restrained, Elegant). While FIST aimed to reduce the time, cost, and complexity associated with developing new military gear, FIRE extends these methods to applications beyond the battlefield. The idea was to take the concept from the profession of arms and bring it to the marketplace, essentially turning the sword into a plowshare. If only all weapons could undergo a similar transformation.

Many of the stories that follow are about military equipment or NASA missions, of course, because thats the world I come from. The principles and techniques, however, are relevant in a much wider range of situations and can produce technology for all sorts of uses. I hope you enjoy the stories and have fun using the methods. I hope it helps you change the world for the better.

Aim high,

Dan Ward

In December 2010 at a tiny research facility in freezing-cold Rome, New York, US Air Force scientists cut the ribbon on a supercomputer named the Condor Cluster. Operating at 500 TFLOPStrillion floating-point operations per secondit was the fastest supercomputer in the entire Department of Defense and the thirty-third fastest in the world. Contributing to its awesomeness was the price tagthe Air Force only paid 10 percent of what it would cost for a comparable supercomputer. On top of that, the Condor Cluster uses a mere 10 percent of the electricity typically required by similar machines, which means its got a smaller carbon footprint and is less expensive to operate. Not a bad days work.

One other interesting fact about the Condor Cluster: it was built out of 1,760 Sony PlayStations. True story.

In other parts of the Department of Defense, results were decidedly less awesome. Just three months earlier, in September 2010, the Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments related to the US Navys A-12 Avenger airplane, known to some as the Flying Dorito because of its triangular shape. Begun in 1983 and envisioned as an all-weather, carrier-based stealth bomber/attack jet, the Avenger program was terminated in 1991, at which point the Navy had spent $2 billion but received nothing for its money beyond a really exciting case study in failure for students at the Defense Acquisition University.

After almost twenty years of litigation, the nations highest court was finally going to consider whether the governments decision to cancel this bloated project was justified. Resolution was apparently not to be, and in May 2011 the court returned the case to the lower appeals court instead of deciding, so the saga continued.

We could spend all day looking at similar examples from all the military services, highlighting the ups and downs of defense technology. The Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force all have their own stories of critical new gear being delivered in a matter of weeks, right alongside stories where billions and decades are spent to deliver exactly nothing. Of course, these highs and lows are not limited to the military. NASA has some of the best failure and success stories around, and the pages that follow present several of each. For that matter, the federal government does not have a monopoly here, and as the book progresses well look at stories from the private world as wellportable music players, household appliances, and science toys, to name a few. But before we consider any particular stories, lets look at the disparities among them in general terms.

Why do some programs deliver their product under budget, while others see their costs expand by orders of magnitude? Why do some deliver ahead of schedule, while others experience endless delay after endless delay? And, most critically, which products work betterthe quick and thrifty, or the slow and expensive? Which situation leads to superior equipment?

After a few years of conducting informal research into these questions, I spent eighteen months at the Air Force Institute of Technology looking at them more rigorously. The pattern that emerged is this: the most successful project leaders from government and industry alike tend to deliver top-shelf stuff with a skeleton crew, a shoestring budget, and a cannonball schedule. In interviews I read and those I personally conducted, project leaders continually echoed one theme: We had no time and no money. We were just lucky to have a small team of really creative, dedicated people and we got it done.

In contrast, project leaders who are cursed with large budgets, large teams, and long schedules generally have a difficult time delivering even a fraction of the promised capability, an outcome often blamed on an excessively cumbersome process. Interestingly, when faced with cancellation due to severe cost overruns and delays, these leaders typically respond, If I had a little more time and money, I could fix this.

Yes, those who had the largest budgets were most likely to ask for more money and least likely to deliver an actual working product. Those with the smallest budgets were most likely to have cash left over after delivering ten pounds of awesome on a five-pound purse. For reasons well examine shortly, the faster, cheaper stuff also tends to perform better in actual use than the slower, more expensive stuff.

The idea that spending less time and money leads to better outcomes sounds a bit like claiming that moderate amounts of red wine and dark chocolate are good for you. Surely this is too good to be true. And yet, as with the aforementioned health benefits, the data is compelling. In the pages that follow, well take a closer look at exactly when, how, and why the FIRE approach leads to superior equipment and products. Be forewarned: just because FIRE is possible does not mean it is necessarily easy to implement, but Im sure you didnt come here looking for easy answers.

We havent said much about complexity yet, so lets remedy that right now. Successful project leaders tend to place a premium on simplicity in their organizations, processes, documentation, and technologies. They tend to view simplicity as a desirable attribute and pursue opportunities to simplify when they are able. Later in the book well see some tools that will help us do precisely that.

FIRE codifies the practices, principles, and tools used by some of the best technology developers in the worldpeople who sent spacecraft on intercept courses with asteroids or who built fighter planes that dominated the skies of World War II. FIRE also describes the way clever toy designers teach science lessons that are actually fun. In the stories that follow, well see that project leaders who embrace speed, thrift, simplicity, and restraint tend to deliver affordable equipment that is available when its needed and effective when its used. Youll learn how to do that too.