It has to be fear, insecurity, and/or peer pressure. Companies should not expect their employees to work over 40 hours a week if they are salaried employees. If they can earn overtime, that’s a different story. Sure, a few weeks…   Read more»

People will leave when they don’t feel valued. Being “valued” has many different definitions to different people. Some people determine their value based on their income, amount of recognition, type of projects they are given, how well their ideas are…   Read more»

Something I learned in this class is that a PM is ultimately responsible for everything related to the project. While they may not have to do everything, i.e they can delegate to Subject Matter Experts, they are still the face…   Read more»

Posted by: @manolo Dr. Simon touched upon Design Review Meetings. He gave a strategy of sending documents to the expected attendees ahead of time in order to get a faster approval. Is there any other way that you can think…   Read more»

Posted by: @djr32 For my capstone, we had one main project of developing a mobile application. However, within this one project, we had different mini projects which were put together at the end to become one mobile application. One project…   Read more»

Posted by: @amin-sadig As many of us know, there is a lot of paperwork involved in most processes within projects whether it is for monitoring or documentation purposes and individual companies have different Quality Management Systems. While it is easy…   Read more»

@srg36 is correct. Single source is a little risky, but it is a necessary evil while launching a new product to market. The project team does not have enough time to on board a secondary source in most projects. To…   Read more»

Personally, the biggest challenge that a PM faces is baby sitting people. People have different priorities, this is the exact reason that a PM is needed. If the project team members understood the priorities of a project, everything would flow…   Read more»

@jp582 All your points are valid. However, I’ve been in many situations where we are presenting the overall project ghant chart to the customer/management, and almost immediately the first question is “How can we reduce the project timeline?”. The time…   Read more»

@ajm73 I definitely agree with you that the project team should just focus on the initial project at hand. Unfortunately, that is hard to do, especially for projects that are driven by the customer. I work in a 3rd party…   Read more»

After looking through the FDA’s guidance on Software as a Medical Device (SaMD), which is detailed more simply on this FDA page https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/digital-health/device-software-functions-including-mobile-medical-applications#e, its clear the FDA is being very tentative about its approval process. From the sheer size of…   Read…[Read more]

Initiating projects is getting buy-in from others by balancing research and taking a strong lead in my experience. In contrast to what others have said in this thread, initiating a project isn’t necessarily the very beginning of one. Many times,…   Read more»

When I saw the first post in the thread, the device that popped into my head was the LifeAlert device that are typically used by seniors to get immediate medical assistance in the instance of an emergency when living independently. …   Read more»

Posted by: @rjs84 According to Daniel Goleman, success can be broken down to be 70% interpersonal skills and 30% technical knowledge. The idea of this balance being in favor of interpersonal skills is not what I am questioning. A Forbes…   Read more»

Posted by: @rjs84 According to Daniel Goleman, success can be broken down to be 70% interpersonal skills and 30% technical knowledge. The idea of this balance being in favor of interpersonal skills is not what I am questioning. A Forbes…   Read more»

In my experience, a great way to avoid repeated mistakes on company projects as a whole is strategic team building. When managers staff the different phases in projects, it’s important that they pull a diverse group of people from various…   Read more»

Communication is the key to being successful in the medical device industry. Of course, you also need to be technically competent, but interpersonal/communication/management skills with a technical basis is arguably more powerful. If you have a high technical competency and…   Read more»

Interpersonal skills are a necessary for a project manager to be effective and for them to move their career forward. Being extroverted or introverted doesn’t matter as much as able to communicate and connect with people in order to get…   Read more»

International/multicultural project teams can be difficult for a lot of reasons. In my experience, the hardest part is accountability. Various things already spoken go into this, like time zones, cultural differences, communication barriers and etc. I’ve managed projects where we’ve…   Read more»