This is because, to a certain extent, these scientific methods must keep absolutely traditional steps and are very linear. Only when the previous stage is completed can they progress to the next stage. Therefore, organizations design architectural units around narrow scientific fields, and then provide resources to these loosely defined teams to complete tasks.
For example, we found that the clinical development team of one of our biotechnology customers lacked coordination. They follow strict scientific process protocols, and team members seek all key decisions from the heads of their functional departments. The only real team activity is to prepare a great PPT for the steering Committee every month to show the progress. From our analysis, it is found that this inefficient back-and-forth between personal work and reporting functions wastes about 30% of its time and productivity, and most importantly, reduces the ability of rapid iteration, even if everyone knows what rapid iteration means. - ? Rapid iteration For the department of drug research and development, which is capital-intensive and uncertain, faster adaptation will bring obvious benefits.
Traditional scientific working methods are also very expensive. Even if you finally come to a dead end, you have to go through some twists and turns to find it. According to the recent research on the pharmaceutical industry, the average out-of-pocket cost of each newly approved drug is $654.38+$0.4 billion; In the past few decades, this number has increased steadily. The overall scientific research productivity in the United States is also declining; According to the estimation of scholars from Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the average annual decline is 5.3%.
Other factors that bring pressure to enterprises include the rapid changes of laws and regulations and the increasing expectations of shareholders for higher performance R&D investment.
Considering the challenges faced by most science-oriented R&D teams (including pharmaceutical and other fields), agile framework may provide new value in supporting teams from breakthrough discovery to successful business development.
Agile science at work
In our work in related companies, we have seen the emergence of what we call agile science: a new way of working, which is characterized by pragmatism in using agile methods and tools in specific environments.
There was once a German chemical company that adopted the agile principle of rapid iteration and invited customers to participate in its R&D process from an early stage. This new method can increase the R&D productivity by 20% by suspending the project early in the process or turning it in a new direction. For example, because a small number of industrial detergent customers were invited to help with the prototype test in the early stage, according to the test results, the company decided to shelve the research, otherwise it would lead to expensive failure.
Or take PTC Therapeutics as an example, which is a biopharmaceutical company headquartered in New Jersey, focusing on the discovery, development and commercialization of drugs for rare diseases. The challenge for PTC is to quadruple the planned research and clinical development projects within 24 months, which is due to its expanding R&D investment and R&D plan. It adopts a team-based architecture, which reduces efficiency and achieves rapid expansion through authorized and cross-functional research, clinical development and business groups. Although this transformation is still in progress, senior leaders are now more confident in successfully managing greater complexity. Early results also show that the increase in productivity may be enough to manage more than twice as many projects, and also improve the success rate of projects.
This provides a framework for more organizations to join the agile science movement.
1. Take action on unexpected suspicions. Cognition is the key, especially in this natural science field that needs to be skeptical. Scientists are trained to believe only in controlled experiments. It is natural to doubt agility. In order to change the initial negative view of agile, you need the right methods to spread and realize these concepts.
It is helpful to find a powerful example. We have an extensive research institute at MIT and Harvard University, a biomedical and genome research center. In 20 16, agile enthusiasts of Broad Institute launched an open agile practice community named "Agile Scholars" to learn more about practices and how to apply them to help non-software teams. This group now includes representatives from more than 20 Broad laboratories and management departments, who meet monthly to discuss agile practices and coordinate in-depth agile training and agile conference activities for the Broad Institute community. Therefore, as more and more people understand the benefits of agile, the value, routines and tools of agile will naturally spread to the team through the organization.
2. Emphasize "why" and pay more attention to "why" to be agile, rather than "what" and "how" to integrate methods. What organizational model and practice should be used to drive decision-making with * * * knowledge around goals?
At PTC Therapeutics, the team of the Executive Committee first discussed Agile at the seminar to see if it is suitable for the company. The discussion of "why" is especially valuable, which allows executives to agree on the reasons for immediate change. The company is experiencing accelerated growth and needs to change its working methods quickly to manage greater scale and complexity and achieve its medium-term goals. Subsequently, the CEO and COO shared the plan at the company-wide staff meeting and emphasized the "why". Therefore, it has been widely recognized and welcomed by everyone in the company.
Agile transformation may have several basic principles: reducing costs, improving productivity, becoming more customer-centric by quickly adapting to feedback, accelerating decision-making, improving employee participation, and so on. When this "why" is determined and communicated, people are more likely to accept or even welcome this change.
3. Achieve flexibility. Agile does not require a desperate approach. Some routines and tools are valuable and applicable, while others are less important, depending on your environment and business needs. Process rigidity is the opposite of agility. It is perfectly acceptable that the agile R&D team may not-almost certainly not-look like an agile software team.
For example, in the process of exploring Agile, several laboratories of Broad Institute soon realized that daily scrum was too much for them. Many experimental procedures are the same every day, and these teams have not found value in such frequent meetings. So they adjusted the rhythm and scope of Scrum. Some people meet once a week to adjust their work and eliminate dependence. In addition, more project-based teams change the frequency of meetings according to the progress of laboratory projects—for example, once a day at a stage that requires a lot of coordination (sample processing, paper writing, etc.). ), once a week or two at other times.
4. Organize around the right team. Team is the basic delivery unit of agile organization. However, it is difficult to find a suitable team organization in a science-oriented enterprise. People are assigned to projects, but they still agree to completely independent functions and departments, which use their scientific knowledge as a method to control "related decisions". In addition to the typical organizational axis, the field of knowledge has also established fiefs, which are not questioned by the outside world.
In PTC therapeutics, the cross-functional agile team has become the basic unit to organize the new clinical development part. The company created a so-called "pool function", which can dynamically allocate resources to newly defined agile teams "on demand", and these teams are authorized to drive decisions within their defined scope without any friction and resistance from the old functional silo model.
For example, for advanced clinical drug development projects, the core team is usually composed of full-time personnel from clinical operation, supervision and medical care. The product owner is a marketing person supported by scrum master (similar to Scrum Master of other organizations). The functional library is used as a personnel library to take care of the balance between medium-term demand and talent supply.
In this article, team leaders balance the project priorities and interdependencies among multiple teams related to the same drug, and rely on bottom-up autonomy and results from each team to ensure the two-way consideration of the company's strategic priorities and mission objectives. PTC Therapeutics not only expects to gain higher efficiency from this agile organizational model (that is, to expand more smoothly with less resources), but also expects to accelerate its clinical development and shorten the research and development cycle.
The application of agile in science has just begun. The deep-rooted scientific community will naturally resist changing their work habits. However, when these agile pioneer organizations report their positive achievements and experiences to the world, the demand for agile science may increase. After all, learning and adaptation are always the core of science.
Original link:
Should companies use Agile? from=groupmessage
-Translator: Adam Anheng