Defining and prioritizing projects…

Shifting from an unorganized attempt to complete approximately 40 projects and requests to a focused, prioritized, detailed action plan for 10 high-value projects.

This biotech organization was struggling to align and maintain focus on delivering high-value operational and R&D capabilities. A newly-appointed leader recognized the need to organize and manage the constantly-growing list of requests, prioritize the critical projects, and manage the projects as a ‘portfolio’.

With a list of request, and no shared understanding amongst the cross-functional leadership team regarding the number of projects in the pipeline, the associated costs, or the resourcing, skill, and time requirements, the org was not moving toward high-priority outcomes and was struggling to identify the challenges.

Attainment worked with the SVP of Strategy and Operations, the President, the Head of IT, and the Head of R&D Informatics to:

  • understand the organization’s priorities and challenges

  • clarify, document, and communicate organized information (dashboards) about the project pipeline

  • identify and map cross-functional and technical dependencies

  • outline the resourcing, skill, budget, and time requirements for the highest-priority and in-flight projects

  • facilitate cross-functional awareness, prioritization, and decision making for continued investment in the requested projects

Utilizing best-practice communication and change management, Attainment engaged a diverse group of stakeholders across functional areas to effectively distribute required information, generate awareness and understanding, and align leadership and user expectations.

Demonstrated services and expertise:

  • Governance design, education, and introduction

  • Cross-functional collaboration, communication, and change management

  • Process analysis and pragmatic, fit-for-purpose design and evolution

  • Planning and coordination

  • Resource management

Aligning projects to corporate strategy

Highlights:

  • Many organizations say they have a clearly-articulated strategic direction but not all communicate that strategy well to the employees who must implement it. These companies are like a body whose brain is unable to tell it what to do.

  • Lack of knowledge about one’s own company is a primary reason for project failure. Companies who do not know their starting position build future corporate plans not on a solid foundation but on shifting sand. Furthermore, their leadership often does not understand what is wrong or how to distinguish what needs fixing.

  • Projects that are not clearly aligned to corporate objectives may be completed ‘successfully’ by project management standards (on time, on budget, to spec) but considered failures because they did not address a business need. This issue can be alleviated by tying strategic planning to portfolio selection and project execution.

The right projects at the right time

Highlights:

  • Good portfolio management increases business value by aligning projects with an organization’s strategic direction, making the best use of limited resources, and building synergies between projects. Unfortunately, organizations often do portfolio management poorly. As a result, they fail to deliver strategic results because they attempt the wrong projects or can’t say “no” to too many projects.

  • Nearly all organizations have more project work to do than people and money to do the work. Often the management team has difficulty saying “no.” Instead, they try to do everything by cramming more work onto the calendars of already overworked project teams or by cutting corners during the project. Despite a heavy investment of people and money in projects, the organization still gets poor results because people are working on the wrong projects or on too many projects. Trying to do too much causes all projects to suffer from delays, cost overruns, or poor quality.

Identifying, planning, resourcing, and reporting on current and required process and technology changes…

Having recently joined a biotech organization that was preparing to launch its first commercial treatment, the SVP of IT needed to identify, plan, resource, and report on current and required process and technology changes.

To aid org design and resource alignment, Attainment was engaged to:

  • Understand and document plans (including timelines and urgency), processes, teams, roles and responsibilities

  • Review operational targets and milestones to outline high-level requirements for people, process, and tech across Enterprise Support (HR, IT, FIN, Legal), Research and Development, Clinical, Regulatory, Quality, Manufacturing, and Medical Affairs functions

  • Provide project management and guidance for planned, in-flight, and urgent projects

  • Aid roadmap development by outlining and agreeing needs, priorities, dependencies, and investment sequencing across Enterprise Support (HR, IT, FIN, Legal), Research and Development, Clinical, Regulatory, Quality, Manufacturing, and Medical Affairs functions

In 12 weeks, Attainment:

  • Documented project details across all functional areas

  • Established a document-management structure for project management processes and project documentation

  • Established project planning and reporting processes

  • Aided the development of a cross-functional capabilities roadmap

With this insight, documentation, and structure, the SVP of IT was able to build a team of supporting resources that was better prepared to aid ongoing developments.

Demonstrated services and expertise:

  • PMO design and implementation

  • Project management guidance and coaching

  • Roadmapping

Change Management Highlights from Lab Automation and Cloud Lab Webinar

  • Have a plan for ongoing and effective engagement with the executive sponsor

  • Understand the nuances for different user and stakeholder groups

  • Develop realistic expectations for user and stakeholder focus and involvement

  • Understand the ongoing operation and maintenance model from the onset of system selection and implementation