The Point

The die has been cast

In business, we are often in situations where we have to decide between two options. Two or even more alternatives are on our mind. A decsion has to be made, but we don’t know what is the right direction to go, because all available choices are associated with undesired side effects. But, we also know what relief we will feel once “the die has been cast”. Once we make a decision we are determined to move on. Things fall into place. I’d like to share with you the story behind this expression taking you more than 2000 years back in history. (Note: The orginial story was reported by Suetonius. Here you find the full story in all details. I used various web references putting supporting facts together).

The person that is the face to the expression “The die has been cast,” which in his language is ”Alia iacta est!” is Julius Caesar. He is certainly one of the most colorful personalities in Roman history. In his time Julius Caesar was certainly not known for his indecisiveness. One of the stories about him is from a time, when he was working basically as a lawyer known for his exceptional oratory, accompanied by impassioned gestures and a high-pitched voice, and ruthless prosecution of former governors notorious for extortion and corruption about 75BC. Aiming at improving his already very advanced rhetorical skills, Caesar travelled to Rhodes that year to study under Apollonius Molon, who had previously taught Cicero. On the way crossing the Aegean Sea, Caesar was kidnapped by Cilician pirates and held prisoner in the Dodecanese islet of Pharmacusa.  When the pirates thought to demand a ransom of twenty talents of gold, he insisted they ask for fifty talents. While in captivity he told the pirates that he would come after them, once set free. They didn’t believe him at the time. After the ransom was paid, Caesar raised a fleet, pursued and captured the pirates, and imprisoned them in Pergamon. The governor of Asia refused to execute them as Caesar demanded, preferring to sell them as slaves, but Caesar returned to the coast and had them crucified on his own authority, as he had promised to them when in captivity – a promise the pirates had taken as a joke.

So, Julius Caesar was certainly someone we would call a determined person. Now, one of the biggest decisions he actually had to make came about 20 years later in his life. Here is the situation: Born with political ambition and unsurpassed oratory skills, Julius Caesar manipulated his way to the position of consul of Rome in 59 BC. After his year of service he was named governor of Gaul where he made fortune and exhibited his outstanding military skill in subduing the native Celtic and Germanic tribes (nothing that I personally hold against him). Caesar’s popularity with the people soared. He became a threat to the power of the Senate and to Pompey, who held power in Rome. Accordingly, the Senate called upon Caesar to resign his command and disband his army or risk being declared an “Enemy of the State”. Pompey was entrusted with enforcing this edict – the foundation for civil war was laid.

It was January 49 BC, Caesar was staying in the northern Italian city of Ravenna and he had a decision to make: either he would give in and obey the Senate’s command or he would move southward to confront Pompey and plunge the Roman Republic into a bloody civil war. An ancient Roman law forbade any general from crossing the Rubicon River and entering Italy proper with a standing army. To do so was treason. This tiny stream would reveal Caesar’s intentions and mark the point of no return.

It is reported by Suetonius that Caesar stayed in Ravenna (north of the Rubicon). He kept himself busy by attending the public games and examining the model of a fencing school which he proposed building. Also, he frequently sat down to table with a large company of friends dining and talking about god and the world. However, one evening after sunset some mules from a near-by mill were put on his carriage, and he set forward on his journey as privately as possible. Coming up with his troops on the banks of the Rubicon, which was the frontier of his province, he halted for a while, and revolving in his mind the importance of the step he meditated, he turned to those about him, saying: ‘Still we can retreat! But once let us pass this little bridge, – and nothing is left but to fight it out with arms!’ He hesitated then snatched a trumpet from one of the men and ran to the river with it; then sounding the “Advance!” with a blast he crossed to the other side. At this Caesar cried out, ‘Let us go where the omens of the gods and the crimes of our enemies summon us! THE DIE HAS BEEN CAST!’

Accordingly, he marched his army over the river. His way to Rome was very uneventful, although he had to engage in a number of battles in the out years to ultimately beat his political and military enemies. He became the Emporor of Rome. The crossing of a small stream in northern Italy became one of ancient history’s most pivotal events. From it sprang the Roman Empire and the genesis of modern European culture. Like at that time, we should look for our Rubikon’s in business, make a decision and then move forward with the decisiveness of one of the greatest leaders in history.

Critical Chain Project Management for R&D

“We have to do more with less!”

“We have to deliver on the portfolio!”

“ We have to become more nimble!”

Does any of this sound familiar? Well, let me tell you, you are not alone. You can walk the halls of any pharma or medical device company today, and you will quickly pick up these messages. The Top Fortune 500 pharma companies in this space have one issue in common. They have to find out how to replace billions of dollar in lost revenue that will disappear over the next years because drugs are coming off patent. Shareholder are nervous about this.

Yet there is more. Within these companies brilliant people are working on new and exciting ways to bring new drugs and treatments to the people. Drugs that will help to fight cancer, diabetes, infectious diseases and more. Everyday a R&D project is delayed is a day that this particular product ships later to market, finds its way to the patient and ultimately is able to help human beings in need.

Regardless, if shareholder value or servicing the patient is the primary concern, the net net is: We have to find ways to speed up R&D projects. Now, that’s easier said than done. R&D organizations are counting in the thousands in size. They are heavily matrixed. So, getting things done faster is not a simple undertaking to begin with. Now, how do we teach the whole  organization to move faster? That’s like teaching an elephant how to dance.

One of the things that we need to tackle is the milestone system. The work of hundreds of people is broken down in major and minor – so called mini – milestones. The underlying task estimates are safe and include padding  accounting for uncertainty to perform a particular task because things happen:

• Unforseen things might come up
• People work on multiple projects. 

So, these are safe estimates. The whole idea of the milestone system is to have a system that can be used to synchronize work. But what does this for organizational speed? Well, it is what I call a speed killer. People try to get to the next milestone. As long as they get there things are fine. If something unexpected comes up, timelines will be delayed. So, in consequence, they experience frequent delays in a system that is not based necessarily on aggessive timelines to begin with. People, including management, are not happy about this. Because it happens all the time, there is perhaps the conclusion, that this is simply “the nature of the beast”. 

Well, if we take a deeper look the problem has to to with the inability of organizations that embrace the milestone management system to take advantage of “early finishes”. If someone finishes early, then most of the time it doesn’t make a big difference because the next portion of the work won’t start until the milestone date indicates. Organizations do not strive for early finishes because there is no one there to take advantages of them.

Now, in Critical Chain, we work things a bit differently. The starting point is a sound plan. We put cross functional teams (tox, medical, project management, CMC, regulatory etc) in a room and ask them to work out a plan. The question is: What is all the work that needs to get done? What are the real dependencies between tasks. What can be worked in parallel? For specific tasks we ask not for safe but for aggressive durations. For example, let’s assume an initial estimate for a given task is 10 days. Ok. How long does it take when you are focusing on this task and you have nothing else to do? 6 days. OK. How fast can you do this when you really zero on this. If you need something, then don’t just shoot an email. Get on the phone or walk by someone’s cubical. So, what is your estimate now? 4 days. So, we put the 4 days in. Now, of course there is the immediate rebuttal that things never play out that way. That is correct. For those risks we need to put in protection. We add buffer at the end of the project. We aggregate the excution risk on a task level and add it to the project buffer. Because we know, something will happen. We don’t know what, but we want to be prepared. Now, once we are done with this exercise we can compute the Crtical Chain through the network (the longest chain taking into account tasks and resource constraints). Now, all tasks are crtical in this network, but those on the Critical Chain have one important additional characteristic. Every day we slip a task here causes the project to come in later. So, it’s crucial that the teams learn two things:

1. Work the tasks in a very focused manner and be ready when it is your turn.

2. Optimize the hand-offs so that we can benefit from early finishes.

We call this the relay race. Sounds simple? Well, all we do is implement this kind of relay race across an R&D organization with thousands of people. That’s all. We have implemented Critical Chain for about 10 years now. Our early customers were in the medical device and semi-conductor industry. So, we have data on what is possible to achieve on a portfolio level. In terms of cycle time reduction we have seen improvements of up to 45%. Now, that is a peak number for a particular type of project. We wouldn’t expect that on a portfolio level. But even if the improvements are in the 10%-20% that can be a huge impact given the revenue numbers associated with a R&D project in the pharma and medical device industry. On time performance of +90% is possible. The results in implementing Critical Chain in R&D organizations in the past 10 years are well documented. There are a number of key success factors that are important to understand in implementing this.

1.       Executive level stakeholders: there must be a guiding coalition of senior stakeholders. In our implementations, we are focusing on VP and SVP levels in pharmaceutical companies. This should not be attempted to implement as a project management improvement initiative. All functions need to be on board for it to work.

2.       Communication: Like with any other change effort communication is key. What do we try to accomplish and why? Who is behind this? What are our objectives for this year, next year? Communicate early successes. Only if this really helps people to be successful, will organizations embrace it.

3.       Priorities: How do we prioritize? That is in particular in the pharma world a bit of a touchy issue because priorities are known at senior executive levels but not communicated broadly because the companies feel that they give away too much competitive information. But without known priorties how do people day in day out make the right trade of decisions?

4.       Expertise:  The only way we found to make sure that there is enough Critical Chain expertise in the organization is to put key inviduals through an extensive certification process a la six sigma black belt training. It’s a combination of knowledge factors (class training) and on the job training. While this takes time, it ensures that there is sufficient expertise in the organization to sustain the methodology.

5.      Technology: And of course you have to buy ProChain’s software. You probably fully expected me to say that!

 :)