Digi­ta­li­ze Pro­ces­ses and Acce­le­ra­te Deve­lo­p­ment Projects

In light of the mar­ket ent­ry of tech­no­lo­gy com­pa­nies such as Goog­le, Ama­zon, Face­book, IBM and Apple, which want to chan­ge the busi­ness model of the phar­maceu­ti­cal and health­ca­re indus­try in the long term, the tra­di­tio­nal phar­maceu­ti­cal indus­try is under pres­su­re for chan­ge. Inno­va­ti­on pro­ces­ses must be opti­mi­zed and fle­xi­ble struc­tures must be estab­lished. The digi­ta­liza­ti­on of pro­duc­tion pro­ces­ses, and also that of infor­ma­ti­on and decis­i­on making pro­ces­ses in par­ti­cu­lar, are important mile­sto­nes on the way to a strong mar­ket position.

Num­e­rous com­pa­nies in the phar­maceu­ti­cal sec­tor are still at an ear­ly stage of their digi­ta­liza­ti­on pro­cess. Others rely on agi­le tools on the path they pur­sue, as the fol­lo­wing exam­p­le will show. The coro­na pan­de­mic has shown that coor­di­na­ti­on and decis­i­on pro­ces­ses which are not digi­tal­ly assis­ted con­front com­pa­nies with huge pro­blems. Ins­tead of making coor­di­na­ti­ons in per­son, teams now incre­asing­ly have to coor­di­na­te their work in vir­tu­al mee­tings. Ins­tead of being set out in pho­ne calls, on paper, or in a local file, infor­ma­ti­on must be mana­geable in a fle­xi­ble way and it must be made available so that all per­sons invol­ved have access to it. But even after having over­co­me this pan­de­mic situa­ti­on, the digi­ta­liza­ti­on of infor­ma­ti­on and decis­i­on making pro­ces­ses will con­ti­nue to gain in importance sin­ce team mem­bers or decis­i­on makers who are to be included in the flow of infor­ma­ti­on are often geo­gra­phi­cal­ly disper­sed or work from home.

In such times, the manage­ment of vir­tu­al teams and the brie­fing of stake­hol­ders pose a huge chall­enge. How does com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on work bet­ween pro­ject team mem­bers who are in dif­fe­rent geo­gra­phic loca­ti­ons with dif­fe­rent time zones? How can mana­gers make sure that employees who work from home are up-to-date in terms of their pro­jects, tasks, and com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on with col­le­agues and cus­to­mers? How can digi­tal chan­ge suc­ceed, how can inter­nal resis­tance to chan­ge on the part of employees
be overcome?

Col­la­bo­ra­ti­on Tool Faci­li­ta­tes Communication

In an expert talk, Dr Tors­ten Eckardt, Seni­or Mana­ger PMO and Inno­va­ti­on at Her­mes Arz­nei­mit­tel GmbH, tells the DIGITAL PROCESS INDUSTRY edi­to­ri­al team how the use of agi­le plan­ning and col­la­bo­ra­ti­on soft­ware can help to plan deve­lo­p­ment pro­jects and opti­mi­ze decis­i­on-making pro­ces­ses in the cur­rent pan­de­mic-rela­ted situa­ti­on when pro­ject team mem­bers are working at dif­fe­rent locations.

The new plan­ning method comes with grea­ter speed and increased up-to-daten­ess of infor­ma­ti­on for all pro­ject team members.

Inter­view with Dr. Tors­ten Eckardt

Seni­or Mana­ger PMO and Inno­va­ti­on at Her­mes Arzneimittel

You are alre­a­dy plan­ning your deve­lo­p­ment and orga­niza­tio­nal pro­jects with tra­di­tio­nal pro­ject manage­ment soft­ware. Now you have intro­du­ced an agi­le plan­ning tool to opti­mi­ze pro­ces­ses in the com­pa­ny during this pan­de­mic situa­ti­on. What bene­fits do you think the tools will have even after the pandemic?

We have imple­men­ted PLANTA pro­ject 2014, long befo­re the pan­de­mic in order to impro­ve the manage­ment and prio­ri­tiza­ti­on of our deve­lo­p­ment, basic load and orga­niza­tio­nal pro­jects in a soft­ware-aided man­ner. This hel­ped us to optim­ze the in-depth plan­ning of the pro­jects and the over­view of exis­ting resour­ces. We can now deve­lop new pro­ducts more quick­ly and with grea­ter cost effi­ci­en­cy. 75 per­cent of our pro­jects are now plan­ned with PLANTA pro­ject. We have now intro­du­ced the agi­le plan­ning tool PLANTA pul­se from the same manu­fac­tu­rer and have incre­asing­ly used it in pro­ject manage­ment and PMO in recent months to impro­ve col­la­bo­ra­ti­on in stra­tegy and deve­lo­p­ment pro­jects. In the cur­rent pan­de­mic situa­ti­on, this tool is par­ti­cu­lar­ly useful for track­ing stra­te­gic pro­jects on a web-based (mobi­le) basis, in which the key pro­ject team mem­bers are working at dif­fe­rent loca­ti­ons. We plan 25 per­cent of our pro­jects with PLANTA pulse.
The bene­fits of both tools — also bey­ond the pan­de­mic situa­ti­on – are very high: more trans­pa­ren­cy and accel­ler­a­ted pro­ject plan­ning as well as bet­ter infor­ma­ti­on qua­li­ty: the time­line­ss of the infor­ma­ti­on is the same for all pro­ject team members.
Dr. Tors­ten Eckardt

What pro­blems does the inte­gra­ti­on of an agi­le plan­ning tool cau­se when pre­vious­ly only tra­di­tio­nal plan­ning was used and how did you sol­ve them?

The new plan­ning method results in grea­ter speed and increased time­line­ss of infor­ma­ti­on for all pro­ject team mem­bers. You can’t sim­ply hope that ever­yo­ne recei­ves the latest infor­ma­ti­on. You have to take into account the human fac­tor: wri­ting on a Kan­ban board is no sub­sti­tu­te for tal­king to each other. Some peo­p­le still have to get accus­to­med to using the board to keep them­sel­ves up to date. Regu­lar update mee­tings with the help of PLANTA pul­se bene­fit ever­yo­ne invol­ved in the pro­ject. If you have not work­ed agi­le­ly befo­re, the new plan­ning method will not be easy, but you will quick­ly get used to it in practice.
Dr. Tors­ten Eckardt

What knowledge/skills should you have in order to imple­ment the agi­le plan­ning method? What requi­re­ments must be met by employees and col­le­agues who are to work with this method?

As head of our pro­ject manage­ment office I am sys­tem owner and admi­nis­tra­tor in PLANTA pul­se. The advan­ta­ge here is that ever­y­thing is set out by one per­son and new boards are crea­ted fol­lo­wing a clear struc­tu­re. In under­went a basic trai­ning in the field of pro­ject manage­ment. The new tool demands more fle­xi­bi­li­ty and indi­vi­du­al respon­si­bi­li­ty from tho­se who work with it. The­re is a good deal of com­mit­ment sin­ce ever­y­bo­dy wants to work agi­le­ly. Howe­ver, it is some­ti­mes still dif­fi­cult to chan­ge the estab­lished com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on channels/culture.
Dr. Tors­ten Eckardt

What role does the com­pa­ny manage­ment play in the suc­cess sto­ry of the new plan­ning tool? 

It plays a par­ti­cu­lar­ly cen­tral role and pro­vi­des sup­port. By sup­port­ing the new plan­ning con­cept, the imple­men­ta­ti­on can beco­me a suc­cess. The com­pa­ny manage­ment is high­ly moti­va­ted as it now has a much quicker over­view of the sta­tus of pro­jects. Infor­ma­ti­on is pro­vi­ded smooth­ly to ever­yo­ne invol­ved and, as a result, decis­i­on-making pro­ces­ses are accelerated. 
Dr. Tors­ten Eckardt