Tips for Successfully Managing Remote Teams and Projects
Managing Projects Remotely in a Pandemic Last year, Waddell Group CEO Tom Waddell interviewed Dr. Michael O’Connor, Director of Strategy and Project Development at Medtronic about tips on managing projects in a pandemic. Dr. O’Connor shared some wisdom about quickly adapting and executing projects during lockdown and afterwards. At the onset of their conversation, Dr. O’Connor stated that Medtronic saw the pandemic ahead of time through their global presence, but what they saw still didn’t prepare them for the scale and impact COVID-19 would have on project management practices and…
Read More »
How Integrity in Project Management Leads to Team Success
Integrity Is a Critical Component for a Successful Project Recently, we talked about why integrity is a critical part of project management and what’s required to maintain the integrity of the project and the company. In brief, the project manager needs to be aware of (and convey to their team): The intent of the project Why the company is doing the project Profitability The trade-offs required to achieve the project goal But that’s not enough. You also need to manage the project with integrity so that it doesn’t get off…
Read More »
Why Integrity Is a Critical Part of Project Management
With its many moving parts to direct and risks to navigate, managing a new medical device project can be a challenging undertaking. Because of the stringent quality requirements in the medical device industry, project management principles such as project structure, setting goals, tracking status, risk management, and resource management are especially important, and leading this charge is integrity. So, what exactly is integrity, and why should it be a critical part of project management? Defining Integrity in Medical Device Project Management Integrity is all about “honoring your word.” This includes identifying…
Read More »
Evolution of Project Management Under COVID-19
COVID has changed the communication experience Tom Waddell interviewed Jonathan Flachman recently around what we have learned when it comes to Project Management under COVID-19. That interview created the genesis for this blog post and if you want to watch the video, please click here. To begin with, some things have not changed. Communication is still the best currency a project manager has at their disposal to help manage the people in their project. This looks very different in an environment within a COVID-19 experience than it did before. Project…
Read More »
Technical Project Management
Why it is important to have a technically trained engineer run your project We are often asked – when it comes to medical device project management, what does it take to be a World-Class Project Manager? The answer to the question is an important one, and certainly, things like experience and project management training are important. But we have found that having an education and (lots of) experience in a relevant technical field combined with leadership skills is what sets our people above the rest when providing the best medical…
Read More »
Project in chaos? Don’t Panic!
Project chaos/crises can be caused by several factors, from a complete breakdown of direction, a lack of performance on key activities, or even misguided leadership. Sometimes it’s outside factors that throw everything into disarray. This last cause may be relevant to our current work environments. There are four key elements of rescuing a project in crisis, those project management steps include: 1. Define “What’s So” 2. Define the Project 3. Create a Plan 4. Define Risks and Mitigation Defining “What’s So” The most important first step in a chaotic situation…
Read More »
Leadership in the Realm of Employee Motivation
Lots of people talk about leadership – including us if you review other blog posts we’ve made on www.Waddellgrp.com. People talk about how you get your team members to do what you need them to do. How closely should you manage? How should you give difficult feedback? This article will approach leadership from a different perspective: What motivates your team members to do their best? We’ll start by going down a historical lane and examining what one ancient general believed motivated people to go to war. While not the whole…
Read More »
How to increase profit through rightsizing your Quality System
This is a series of blogs geared around accelerating product development through clinical study (animal, cadaver, or FIM). Successful medical device companies have been developing products for decades but along the way, some have developed quality systems no longer adequate to achieving competitive speed to market in the current landscape. There are many reasons for this: additions due to internal issues, embracing all FDA “suggestions” for improvement, general institutional scope creep inside the best-intended methodologies of creating safe, effective, and approvable medical devices The results have yielded quality and…
Read More »
Hierarchy of Teams
Abraham Maslow theorized that we as humans have a hierarchy of motivation that transcends from getting our basic human needs met to stay alive all the way through self-actualization. As a team of project managers, we see the same kinds of dynamics at play in the hierarchy of what a project team needs. Waddell Group segmented four levels of team quality and identified the qualities of each. Further, we have identified attributes of these stages to enable identification of the level or stage at which your team operates. The categories…
Read More »
Being a Great Team Member
October 30, 2017 Leadership Development, Project Management/Leadership There are multitudes of articles and books that contain advice on how to be a great leader. But what if you’re like most of us and not at the top of the food chain? In most teams, there is one leader and a team of people doing the work. While we like to place the responsibility for a project’s success or failure on the leader, every team member has ownership and influence on how a project turns out. Your contribution to the project must…
Read More »