Project Management Innovation: Collaboration without Boundaries

Driving Consistency and Quality

Innovation in project management systems is driving a future free of boundaries. Envision a platform that supports COVID-era virtual team collaboration, designed by operations people for operations people. A streamlined, holistic process that offers proactive insights into project health. An approach that makes managing portfolios and projects more intuitive, intelligent and supportive of risk management. We recently shared Labcorp Drug Development insights at the DIA conference; this blog summarizes the discussion.

Challenges

Project management complexities center around a historical scenario involving multiple platforms, communication challenges and inconsistent workflows. These barriers impede the process and frustrate teams. They also waste time and resources, impacting bottom-line success. Moving forward, a project management system must be engaging and effective.

Collaboration

We believe that people are our greatest asset. The more we can work as a team and share insights, the more effective we will be. The COVID impact has inhibited face-to-face contact, driving the need for tools that support a new level of information sharing and interpersonal connectivity —via iPhone, iPad and other interfaces. Support for this transformative collaboration is imperative in today’s “new normal.”

The forward-thinking solution supports collaboration, automated help, consistent metrics and an integrated workflow. Enabling shared access to all files and folders, the platform accommodates collaboration and learning across time zones with appropriate version control.

Teams can easily see priorities and due dates, “who is doing what,” plus accountability and ownership. The platform supports unprecedented interconnectivity to manage drug development projects across entire portfolios. A streamlined process makes life easier for managers and improves outcomes for clients.

An effective, futuristic project management system includes a toolkit designed to:

• Aid collaboration, effective risk management and informed decisions in the format of a social platform
• Provide consistency for a common view of history
• Link knowledge to actions and priorities
• Provide trustworthy and timely data
• Focus attention on what is essential

Most importantly, tools are created from a user-centric perspective.

Risk Management

As our industry is highly regulated, quality assurance and early identification of risk factors are critical. We have grown accustomed to seeing red lights and then reacting to problems. Moving forward, we can create a more positive focus on system health—a fundamental shift in mindset. Rather than raising a flag when a problem has developed, a system must be intelligent enough to identify trends and alert teams when a potential risk is on the horizon—before it becomes a problem. This way, we get ahead of issues and enable human intervention.

A study health score can provide a single number to compare data across studies, measuring performance vs. planned projections. Rather than being overwhelmed with alerts and emails, project managers see the big picture. For example, if we are tracking 20 studies, and 19 of them have a high score, but one has a poor score, we can focus on that study.

An effective system offers project managers useable information and tracks trends across projects, clients and portfolios—identifying potential risks across the business. Metric oversight includes finances, recruitment, site performance, quality and governance. The system also allows monitors to search data for each site and investigate backlogs or other critical issues by providing individual site health scores. The result: enhanced risk management for increased peace of mind.

Consistency & Transparency

Project managers need the right information at the right time facilitated by a platform that supports increased consistency and quality. This improvement leads to holistic risk management, whereby we track trends against plans to identify potential risks.

Intuitive metrics are easy to understand, accessible through a central, interactive dashboard. We can look for a root cause behind an issue—identifying critical metrics with the greatest impact on study health. With complete history shared via one system, managers can easily review project details instead of searching Excel workbooks or emails.

Transparency means teams may easily understand how metrics are calculated to answer critical questions. If we see red lights or green lights, we know how they are determined and where to look for further details. Functional leads can drill down—at a study level or portfolio level—to see outliers for specific conditions and then take fast, appropriate action looking at near real-time data.      

Conclusion

Post-COVID, we are operating in a different world—more connected and more virtual. Leveraging an end-to-end philosophy, modern project management supports collaboration, enhances risk management and incorporates consistency plus transparency. At Labcorp Drug Development, we are positioned to maximize the value of drug development projects via Xcellerate project management innovation—and ultimately, better meet the needs of patients seeking life-changing healthcare solutions. 

Learn about creating a successful remote monitoring strategy for clinical trials in our new blog post.