The dream machine lets a community coordinate ideas (dreams).

It's an unstructured, self-organising, learning machine! When sharing ideas, members of a community:

  • Ask questions and comment on an idea
  • Vote for or against an idea
  • Tag and filter ideas
  • Create a “Business Value” business case for the idea.
  • Identify a task that needs to be performed for the dream to become a reality.
  • Identify a risk associated with the idea or task.
  • Identify an alternative (option) to mitigate the risk.

The Dream Machine is a perfect Agile Programme Risk and Task Management tool to coordinate the activities and manage the risk of a programme of work.

It's based on the Real Option principle of -- "There is no such thing as a bad idea, just an idea in the wrong place at the wrong time”. Anyone can enter an idea into the Dream Machine. There's not guarantee that the dream will become a reality, but at least the idea has been recorded, and you will always have an option to use it.

Anyone can champion an idea. Volunteers can sign up to implement ideas without the need for leadership. Volunteers can identify the most desirable ideas through two main avenues:

  1. Business Value. Anyone can create a “Business Value” business case for the idea.
  2. A Voting Mechanism. The dream machine allows you to vote for, or against an idea. You can change your mind as well.
The dream machine can be used to Manage IT Risks at a Programme and Enterprise level. The risks on an IT Project are often contextual as well as General in nature. A project manager that is new to an organisation will be aware of the general risks but they will not know those specific to the organisation. Once they enter an idea/task into the dream machine, they will be presented with risks associated with similar ideas/tasks on other projects in the enterprise. Once they select a risk, they will be able to see the options used by managers to mitigate the risk. Other managers can filter to see the ideas, tasks, risks and options on other projects. For example, a development manager may enter the task “Set up Unix Server”. As the dream machine has a single database for the whole enterprise, the Unix Manager would see this task as soon as it is entered and contact any new development manager to make sure they are aware of lead time or any special conditions such as an installation freeze due to a data centre move. -->

For us, the great thing about the Dream Machine is that its behaviour is emergent. We do not know how it will be used eventually. We can only guess.

Exciting times ahead.
Chris and Andy