Dublin City Beta Projects – Status Update

In January 2012, Shane Waring of  the City Architects Division of Dublin City Council proposed that an idea be explored as a “City Architects 10% Innovation Time Project”. This was approved by Ali Grehan, the City Architect and so within two months the Beta Projects went live (Beta’s ‘birthday’ is the 13th March) with the first Beta Project.

To date (over the past two years), this project has been developed and managed as an “Innovation Time Project”. 

(…Alongside a whole bunch of overwhelmingly–enthusiastic staff from all areas of the Council (we’ll blog on this aspect one day) and Dublin citizens – and indeed far beyond – who have all lent an absolutely massive contribution to all aspects, at all stages, and in their own respective ways.)

Today, the project has been approved to be one of the ‘formal’ projects of the City Architects Division, and so it will no longer be considered an “Innovation Time Project”. Under the terms of that “Innovation Time”, there are naturally certain conditions such as that ‘formal’ projects should always take precedence, limits to the amount of time that should be spent on them, and so forth.

It’s also the reason for the inclusion of the word “trial” as part of the description of the Beta Projects…for example on the Beta Projects Twitter account (see pic below) or Facebook account.

Whilst a “% innovation time” status can sometimes lend great nimbleness to a project in the short-term, over the long-term it can become very difficult to juggle alongside a full-time ‘formal workload’, and so this status change represents fantastic news.

It’s worth noting that whilst we will now remove the word “trial” from descriptions of Dublin City Beta Projects, as always, the mechanism itself will be continually using lean techniques…evolving, measuring itself, and aiming for great return on investment. As we always say – think of Dublin City Beta Projects as a Beta Project itself and as always, feedback and suggestions on any aspect please.

Thanks once again for your help to date – in any little or large way that you may have contributed.