Industry Background
With the global pandemic being the only news for at least 6 months and the kind of impact it has on the global economy, many companies are trying to develop products that help the world heal faster and better. COVID-19 has, till date, more than 5million cases globally with more than 350 thousand deaths and there seems to be no slowing down. With every medical facility in the world stretched out thin and resources falling short, many private players are trying to develop and sell products that may effectively help individual during these uncertain times.
Case Overview
The client was a healthcare startup in USA manufacturing home-based COVID-19 test kits. These kits can be used by individuals to test if they are COVID positive or negative. With most medical facilities in the USA maxed out due to COVID-19 cases, the home-based tests area reliable and safe means of testing an individuals’ COVID status.
Challenges
The challenge was to remotely manage an ongoing operation in the capacity of a project manager where we had to work on coordination and aligning the different departments and functional teams to seamlessly deliver the product to the end-customers.
The key challenges were –
Remotely managing 5+ teams like software team, legal team, hardware team and so on to keep the project timelines on track
Milestone setting for different teams and overall operations to define the next steps and team-based deliverables
Tracking the progress of each stakeholder & extend support whenever necessary
Document, analyze and act on insights for individual teams to improve efficiency & quality of deliverables
Solution
We took the project with a critical status in the times of COVID-19 and worked on it continuously to ensure timely and high-quality delivery of the objectives.
The key takeaways are as follows –
Leveraged project management tools to enable smooth project flow while working remotely
Conducted expectation setting sessions with individual team members to align & define the deliverables at the start of the project. Managed case-by-case members at times as well
Employed the use of automated project management tools to track the progress from a high-level view to the granular level and offered support in case of any discrepancy
