The medical field has seen great advancement in creating digital networks for patient information. I think a similar system can be put in place for project management. Many components of a project are now outsorced including clinical trials. Keeping digital documentation would be easier to transfer each part of the project from one source to…[Read more]

In theory, there should be a direct correlation between talent of an employee and his or her performance. If this were the case, it would make sense to retain the most talented employees at all costs. In reality, the relationship between performance and talent involves other variables. Motivation is one such variable. A lack of motivation can…[Read more]

When preparing the budget for a clinical trial, it needs to be flexible. If the trial goes over-budget, the sponsor must cover the cost. Budget items can be categorized in one of two ways: 1) fixed and upfront costs which are needed for study conduct and are incurred whether or not a subject is enrolled and 2) costs related to subject visits.…[Read more]

Preventative management is ideal. In a sense, reactive management leads to more of the documentation and other factors that you mentioned can lead to delays in progress. Preventative management is the best way to keep to a time and cost budget. However, it is possible to go through an entire project without needing any reactive management.…[Read more]

The Monte Carlo Simulation can be used to model uncertainty in inputs or any problem having a probabilistic interpretation. It can be used to create prices for assets based on an average of hundreds to thousands of hypothetical scenarios.

Because this analysis is ultimately a statistical test, many of its drawbacks come from the assumptions that…[Read more]

The easiest way to categorize these two is to say that quality assurance deals with verification while quality control deals with validation. QA looks to prevent quality problems through planned and systematic activities. Their main goal is to improve development and test processes so that defects do not arise when the product is being…[Read more]

I think each situation has different repercussions. Failing of experiments is something that should be accounted for during planning. Excessive failure of experiments may show that the project is not as feasible as was thought and should be terminated. I think the other situations listed are slightly less predictable. We saw a similar situation…[Read more]

One experience that I had with this was in my undergraduate research. The research I was doing was in collaboration with another lab on campus. The other group with electrospin PLLA based fibers and then I they would send them to me to mechanically characterize them. Doing a collaboration between two groups like this comes with a number of…[Read more]

This was something that was a very common issue when I took capstone. First of all our capstone group of 5 people had many individual commitments that made it very difficult to meet at the same time. One way that we addressed this was to break up into even smaller groups that could all meet at the same time and would focus on specific parts of…[Read more]

Similar too many other people who responded, I also experienced some setbacks during my capstone project. The project was to design an adhesive that would be applied to a graft intended to block a cerebral spinal fluid leak. Our initial timeline involved having nearly 2 months to test our prototype. Unfortunately the materials we purchased took…[Read more]

I don’t think that a company can authorize any of the unethical examples you just suggested. If a new regulation was established, designing a placebo study to circumvent this regulation would not only be unethical but most likely illegal. The first option in this scenario would be to attempt to reevaluate the schedule and see if it is still p…[Read more]

This is a great question but I think it needs to be specified why the change in PM occurred. If it was due to that person leaving your company to take another job or personal reasons… etc. I believe the new PM should more or less ensure tasks are completed in the manner they were originally prescribed. However, this person will also be…[Read more]

As a project manager the first thing I would do is brainstorm with my team all of the possible project and product risks in the initial risk management meeting. For future meetings I think it would be important to balance both a macroscopic and microscopic view of related risks. The major risks involved always need to be considered but time…[Read more]

I believe your post actually involves two different questions. You originally talked about project risks but then asked for an example of a product risk. Product risks refer to potential defects within the product itself. This could be something like designing a software that will need to continue to be updated after the product is initially…[Read more]