Articles
Is BioPharma Investing In Project Management?
by Joseph Pona
“A brand is the set of impressions people have about a company that they may have gained through its advertisements and other communications, the experience of buying and using the company’s products or services, and the interactions they have with the company itself. Companies manage their brand through careful presentation of an image to create a favorable perception and to differentiate themselves from their competitors.”
-- Sony --
I recently took part in a pharma benchmarking surveys. What struck me as interesting was that only 49% of the project managers (638 respondents) have completed a formal project management course. Imagine a role where only half of the people have been trained to perform that function.
We all heard the saying – in order for a business to make money you must invest in the business. I would guess the same would be true when we consider our human capital.
Why is training in project management so important? A recent paper titled “The Continuing Evolution of the Pharmaceutical Industry: Career Challenges and Opportunities” identified some highly valued skill sets needed over the next decade. Some of those skill sets are:
- Ability to manage decentralized intellectual capital resources.
- Ability to work in joint ventures, across divisions, cultures, and countries.
- Ability to spur creativity while managing commercially.
| So the question now becomes how are we addressing competency in project managers? Competency is defined as a combination of technical skills, knowledge, and behavior important to the success of the organization. A competency model we use is depicted below: Training costs money and we are all sensitive to budgets these days but inefficiency and rework have a huge impact on missed milestones, lost opportunities, and time to market. We’ve all experienced last year the collapse of major institutions as a result of a short term focus on their business. As we look forward to 2010 we should ask ourselves – Are we investing in our project management human capital? |
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Joseph Pona is a faculty member of Project Management University™ and President of BioPharm Associates LLC, a Project Management Consulting Company whose focus is on improving business results and value for corporations. The company develops the skills and managerial attention needed to create business success for biopharmaceutical corporations across the globe. We accomplish this through our proven track record in building global project management organizations, proactively managing change, cross cultural sensitivity, human capital alignment and using value analysis methods to provide the optimum solutions to our customers.
