Working for a large biotech company I was assigned to a product development team that was given the challenge of getting a first-in-man drug into a Phase-1 trial using the minimalist amount of resources and shortest amount of time. The project was named after the 1980s TV series hero MacGyver who applied his scientific knowledge to ordinary items (e.g. Swiss Army knife) to create for him and others a means of escape from impending doom and in the process save the world. (more…)
Posts Tagged ‘Project Management’
The MacGyver Project: Lessons Learned in Minimizing Cost and Time to Reach the Clinic
Monday, February 8th, 2010Driving Projects to Success Workshop Generates Compelling Comments from Panelists and Attendees
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009On Friday, October 23, 2009, I had the opportunity to present at one of Maxiom Group’s breakfast workshops that was held at the Westin Waltham Hotel. The topic was how to apply the appropriate level of project management tools and rigor to business initiatives which reach across functional and organizational lines in life sciences. My role was to present a case example from a client engagement that illustrated how we were able to “dial-up”, or “dial-down” the level of structure and control by varying the PM tools to fit the specifics of the project and the client’s culture.
Project Management – When Less is More
Monday, October 19th, 2009As a natural consequence of the work Maxiom Group performs, we are often playing a Project Management role for business transformation in areas such as IT , NDA/BLA support and commercial launch planning/execution. Everybody knows the drill: you identify as many tasks and activities as you can (sometimes several thousand), populate Microsoft Project (using only a small fraction of its capabilities), link people to the tasks, and then hope like hell that someone pays attention to the plan.
