Debate On Project Management In Biopharma Gets Heated

By Louis Garguilo, Chief Editor, Outsourced Pharma

Forget presidential elections. We’ve got the debate we were looking for. The one on the professionalism of project management in the biopharma industry.

It includes a reader’s comments that start with: “I call BS on this article.”

The prosecuting paragraphs are copied below for careful dissecting. Vitriol can be valuable.

Who Started This Fight?

For more than a year, via articles spanning Life Science Leader magazine, PharmaceuticalOnline.com, and our very own OutsourcedPharma.com, we’ve been calling for further introspection into the efficiency and practices of project management in the biopharma, and contract development and manufacturing (CMO) arena.

But it’s our most recent article in OP – Sanofi-Genzyme – And CMOs – Serious About Training Project Managers – that elicited this rough reader response:

 

“I call BS on this article. After nearly 30 years in the pharma industry, I know most of this isn't practical. It's nice to have the luxury of taking PM classes, and pontificating on the topic, but the reality for most PMs is quite different. They're focused on the fast-paced work of adhering to impossible timelines (imposed by those who don't know and don't care), making inadequate budgets work, and managing unrealistic management and stakeholder expectations.

This diatribe is an example of someone who's confusing taking a lot of coursework in project management with actually doing the job, much like someone in an "education" department at university thinks they can teach. And this sounds incredibly condescending to anyone not working in big pharma. I'll take a CRO-trained, boots on the ground, PM any day!”

 

What sets the reader off is the hypothesis that project management in the biopharma industry may lag that of other industries, specific to the training of individuals in the professional project-management skill set required to drive programs and people forward.

If the industry model is to promote scientists and engineers from the labs and facility floors to become PMs – and it is – then more than on-the-job training is needed to provide them with what are otherwise quite universally accepted skills for this role.

From one of those earlier articles mentioned above: “You wouldn’t expect your medicinal chemist, or your pharmacologist, not to have basic skills. How is it then, that we as an industry don’t expect our program managers to have a set of basic skills?”

However, early investigation concluded just that. “Ultimately, today’s increased outsourcing, complex projects, new business models, advanced technologies and platforms, and faster timelines, all seem to add up to a simple need for more project managers in their current shape and form. It’s an industry mostly satisfied with the current roles of its project managers. I, for one, sit surprised at this result. Or perhaps we’ve missed something here.”

A Hostile Environment?

Nobody who’s worked at a biotech, pharma of any size, or CRO/CMO, has confused the workplace for a spa.

The stakes and pressures are high, the jobs challenging. Mistakes can be costly. At times, lethal. Too few outside the industry give the due respect to the women and men of the pharmaceutical development and manufacturing industry.

But is it a reality for most PMs in biopharma to be focused on “adhering to impossible timelines (imposed by those who don't know and don't care), making inadequate budgets work, and managing unrealistic management and stakeholder expectations”?

We hope not. Yet, if this is the reality for even some PMs, taken with the criticality mentioned above, this is more than a project management issue. It’s like an opaque operational opera playing to the music of off-tone management and business decisions. It can’t ultimately end well.

Perhaps your first reaction to the reader’s comments is to ask about “those who don’t care and don’t know,” and the unrealistic stakeholders.

Are they the biotech founders running on tight funding, competing to get projects into service providers or borrowed labs? Big Pharma product-development VPs pushing for results to meet aggressive internal budgets and business-driven timelines? Professionals at CROs/CMOs agreeing to unrealistic customer demands, or attempting to cram as many projects as possible into a quarter?  

Since our contributing reader is nearing 30 years of industry experience in a career running through biotech, Big Pharma, and CMOs, maybe it’s all of the above.

Or none of the above. It could be – who knows why – we’re dealing with a disgruntled person.

But if this is at least partially reflective – and it need only be reflective and not perfectly accurate – of how project managers feel in today’s world of the outsourced supply chain and powerful stakeholders, it should give pause. The pause might be used to seriously assess how the PMs working for or with you are holding up. Forget for a moment our discussion on adequate training: An element of truth here would be much more than that.

We’ve Seen The Culprit, And It’s Us

Let’s, though, move back to the subject at hand – the question of professionally trained project mangers.

The second part of our reader’s statement, although couched in the (real or over-expressed) environment of no time for training, can cast no aspersions further than the commenter himself. He seems to confirm, as we’ve been suggesting for the past year or so, some inherited and limited concept of the project management role, and a lack of recognition that it is a part of an overall profession with certain learnable skills.

Would the reader want at his company an accountant with no background in accounting? He knows, in fact, that would most likely add to his challenges. More likely, his company employs individuals holding some form of universally accepted accreditation or training in accounting.  

Our reader is condescending to the idea for “coursework,” and thinks those who have pursued the (surely) beneficial study of skills associated with project and people management are “like someone in an "education" department at university thinks they can teach ... I'll take a CRO-trained, boots on the ground, PM any day!”

Well, not only will you take them, you’ve got them.

The irony here is that the pursuit of training to enhance skills that might help the PM execute his difficult job within the environment he finds himself, is dismissed as worthless. I spoke recently to a career PM in our industry (experience from both the sponsor and service provider sides), and heard this: “In my personal experience, even small amounts of quality project-management training goes a long way.”

If PMs themselves decide that there can only be the status quo of on-the-job experience, and learning from those also products of this environment, then that attitude should be reassessed. Otherwise, the change that indeed can be driven in business from the floor up, will never be forthcoming.

On the other hand, if companies in the biopharma industry (including external supply chain partners) are burying their PMs in an environment akin to a battlefield, where survival is the goal, companies need to do adjusting as well. Projects are only going to get more complicated, and the reliance on PMs across broader networks more critical.

There are many other elements in this debate. I’m certain we haven’t heard the last on this. Feel free to join in, like the truly valued reader who supplied the base for this article.