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Critical Chain at the 6th Annual Biopharmaceutical Project Management Conference
The biopharmaceutical industry is progressing through significant change and this “metamorphosis” will surely continue for some time. In recognition of the status of the industry, the 2011 PMI Pharmaceutical Community of Practice (CoP) Biopharmaceutical Project Management Conference will be focusing on how project managers and the project management function as a whole can help organizations successfully navigate through this metamorphosis. The conference will include presentations, tutorials, and posters on a broad range of topics. These topcis are relevant to project management professionals seeking to become as effective as possible in the tools, techniques, and approaches that will help them lead their organizations in the new decade.
At this event there will be two possibilities to learn more about Critical Chain in this context. On Monday, March 7, 2010, there is a tutorial on “Critical Chain in the Life Science Industry: The Next Level”. The attendees will learn about :
1. Critical Chain concepts: Key elements of the Critical Chain methodology
2. Implementation: How does Critical Chain improve cycle times and on-time delivery of projects
3. Advanced topics such as Clinical Trial Management, Pipelining, Facilitation of Cultural Change
The presentation will have four elements:
1. Critical Chain – a quick tutorial: This will give attendees new to Critical Chain to follow the rest of the session. Andreas Scherer will cover the key principles of the Critical Chain methodology as well as the basics of buffer management. He will review the usage of Critical Chain on the team level. Towards the end of this element we will discuss some advanced topics (executive sponsorship, sustainability, scalability, change management etc.). Interactive exercises will be used to demonstrate the negative impact of multi-tasking towards overall organizational throughput
2. Andreas Scherer will present strategies how Critical Chain can improve the execution of projects in a large scale portfolio.
3. Real life case studies will be reviewed to discuss opportunities and challenges for the advanced implementor of Critical Chain. He will show examples from the Clinical Trial management world, application of pipelining techniques in the pharmacokinetics area.
4. Q&A session: There will be a the opportunity to have a more in-depth dialog with the speaker. Depending on the size of the audience we plan to keep the session interactive throughout. This element makes sure that the attendees have the opportunity to apply critical thinking to what the content they just learned.
Also, at this event there will be a session with the title “Accelerating Clinical Trials – Is it possible?”. this session will take place on March 9, 2011. Andreas Scherer will give a speech entitled “Speeding up Clinical Trials” which was co-authored by Wendell Simpson, PhD. Here is a short synopsis of this presentation: The financial prospects for pharmaceutical companies have been under pressure for years. Patent expirations, aggressive litigators, the demise of the blockbuster, and rising operating costs continue to put pressures on out-year revenue projections and force companies to consider bold new strategies. One little-explored avenue has recently been receiving more attention acceleration of the new drug pipeline by driving operational excellence. Clinical trials are the centerpiece of the drug development process. Trials generate data, and data are what prove safety and efficacy. As new drugs progress through the phases of development, the critical path at every stage passes right through one or more clinical trials. The overall cycle time through theses phases can be affected by well thought-out clinical strategies, but regardless of how clever the clinical design, it will be the execution of clinical trials that will determine how soon a new product gets to market. Drug development cycle time is and always will be a function of clinical trial cycle times. In this presentation we show how a) Detailed Cross-Functional Planning b) Proactive Project Management c) Aggressive Management of Hand-Offs operational excellence of clinical trials can be accomplished. We will present examples that show how detailed, cross functional planning, and a thorough execution.
Additional details about the program and how to register can be found here.
