When we meet with life sciences clients (especially small/mid-sized companies), Project Management (PM) is very rarely an area of importance. It is almost consistently an afterthought. Clients are typically worried about compliance challenges, process inefficiencies, their leadership's priorities, vendor challenges, revenue targets, obtaining funding, or the ability to get a candidate treatment through its various regulatory hurdles. We typically hear that PM is either not a concern, they have it covered, or they have bigger things to worry about than PM. But, in a challenging economy, why would one ignore PM?
While PM lacks the excitement and buzz of Generative AI, Post-Merger Integration, Tariffs, or Blockchain, its inherent appeal is its lack of flashiness and understated importance to the whole of the R&D lifecycle. When budgets are tighter and the need to effectively execute a project requires a well-designed approach, careful monitoring of resources, milestones, and cost, PM shines in its ability to achieve those goals.
This diminished importance of PM seems to be exclusive to the Health & Life Sciences industry. PM is an important and recognized part of the process in other industries.
Can you imagine the complexities regarding the construction of a multi-story mixed-use building and not having a PMO as an integral element of the process? What would you do if you were investing millions and were told, 'We're good, don't need a PM capability?' Does that make sense to you? Yet, this happens frequently in our industry. Frequently.
Let's review some of the reasons why this occurs.
Everything appears to be optimized
There seems to be minimal need for any assessment or augmentation of PM support. There is a PMO, and it seems to be running as expected. In some cases, everything is going well. But, in other situations, there is truly no clear and current awareness of project performance, resource availability, or project timeliness. The PMO exists in a faux-green light state just waiting for its bubble to be burst.
Micro-Focused on the Issue(s)
Some clients are very focused on specific issues and don't see the importance of expanding their view beyond the problem to be solved. Some can't imagine how PM could be utilized in that scenario. Time is not typically spent defining objectives, scope, impacts, deliverables, sequencing, milestones, costs, risks, etc., to understand the breadth of the activity. In some situations, a structured, project-management approach would provide a more robust solution to addressing that issue and minimize any potential re-work or redundancy.
Fire-Fighting Issues
Other clients prioritize jumping right in to solve the issue and fear that employing a PM-based structure could negatively impact the speed and coordination to address the issue. This is fine for Just-Do-It (JDI) situations. But, in non-JDIs, PM thrives when coordination, transparency, agility (when done right), and structure are needed and managed masterfully, especially when you have a global team engaged.
PM's Value is Not Fully Understood
Some organizations don't have strong institutional memory for Project Management or understand its value. They are more familiar with flashy terms and PM software than methodology execution. In some instances, the PM capability is severely underfunded and under-resourced. This poor awareness of PM either results in it being misapplied in some situations or not applied at all. The true loser in this situation is organizational strategy as those goals may not be realized in the desired timeframe, at the expected level of excellence.
No Budget for Project Managers
The final scenario observed is that there is no funding for project management support (internal or external). They can justify the importance of a Clinical or Regulatory resource, but a project management resource feels like a luxury. It seems dissonant to the complexities of producing a safe and effective treatment that PM is a luxury. As such, projects are handled by whoever is available. This can go well or very poorly. In the horrifying latter situation (which happens more often), a person who rarely designs project plans, manages global cross-functional teams, or even understands what an issue log is, is tasked with driving an important cross-functional project as a 'growth opportunity,' resulting in possible chaos, forgotten deliverables, delays, potential compliance issues, and frustration. If you are in a tough economy and every action counts, why wouldn't you invest in PM rather than allow something to go horribly wrong?
How do we solve this?
In a challenging economy, there is minimal bandwidth for failure or redundancy. Leadership wants to maximize every dollar spent as wisely as possible. The pharma/devices industry typically executes activities or projects with global cross-functional collaboration, coordination across vendors and partners, and complex dependencies. This requires some strong project management ethos in the organization and a stronger and proactive execution of a healthy PM mindset.
This also requires knowing when you need Project Management and how to assess it (as shown below):
Our ultimate stakeholders, the patients, deserve the best that our industry can provide, and working without all of the critical elements diminishes the likelihood that we are giving them the best or delaying the receipt of our best. Even in a challenging economy, PM is a non-negotiable component of realizing organizational goals, and we really need to stop acting like we can treat it like a luxury. It is as critical as having a laptop or cell phone to exist today. The sooner we realize that the sooner we can improve our operational efficiencies and project outcomes, resulting in our ultimate stakeholders getting their much-needed medical treatments in a timely manner.
