Portfolio Management in Drug Discovery and Research and Development

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Using portfolio management in drug discovery and research and development has become more commonly used in the pharmaceutical industry. Bode-Greuel and Nickish take the time to explain the common and difference management practices that are used. The objective of project management is to maximize the value of research and development through proper value driven profile management that allows the alignment of project decision and defined business objectives. The target stakeholders when it comes to project and profile management are the decision makers like the senior management in sales, board members, the head of research and development, head of commercial and the head of strategy just to name a few. The other stakeholders will be the consumers and employees working the project. Although they may not make project ending decisions; they can be affected by the choices made by the management after they have reviewed the research results.  

There are three types of levels in this type of management they are portfolio, program, and project management.  For many these three levels are interchangeable but they are very different practices. Some key differences for these three level are portfolio management sets the priority, analytics, resource, and fiscal management for projects or programs in a group. Portfolio management helps to ensure effective management and according to Project Management Institute organizations that are effective portfolio management have 62% of project meet or exceed expected return on investment (Innotas.com, 2017).  Some problems with profile management are if the company isn’t large enough it may not have a large enough have a formal structure to have a proper portfolio manager.  If done incorrectly senior management will not be able to make proper decisions when it comes to policies and objectives. Program management can spread across several related or similar projects. Benefits of program management are they allow the management to bring related projects together in order to manage the cross-functional items that each project is focus on like business strategies, and cost savings.  During program management helps with giving comprehensive and clear overview of all active projects, identifying issues early, and finding ways to manage and report across all programs consistently.  A disadvantage of program management is it has the habit of having high micromanagement, causing the program process to slow down, miscommunication and lackluster creativity for the management team (Projectmanagementlearning.com, 2017). Project management only manages one individual project at a time, to achieve the production of a specific product, service or result.  During this management you will have collaboration work and task management. They are responsible for management the milestones in a project and make sure the risk portfolio is being monitored. An advantage of project management is it creates a system where the manager can manage and account for all the resources being used to reach the set objectives. This level also allows for effective communication during the project. Since you are only managing one project at a time the client can give feedback on a regular basis increasing customer satisfaction. Some disadvantages of the cost. Not only do you have to pay for a project manager but you must spend resources on hiring and training a project team. This can be an extremely excessive cost for smaller companies. Another disadvantage is the time overhead; there will be delays because of missteps and that will throw off the whole project.

Corporate strategy is about the scope and direction in the overall organization; it’s about the several ways the corporation operates and to achieve goals (Raynor, 2007 ). How this aligns with what Bode-Greuel and Nickish have discussed in the case study; it reviews how using portfolio management techniques can reach and enhance these objectives. During value-driven portfolio management there are two major tasks for implementation they are the methods, and process. Portfolio management allows the management to review the number of projects in the different phases of research. This research is based on both quantitative and qualitative criteria. The effective data analysis serves as a proper frame work for outlining growth and productivity goals for decision making. Conducting quantitative and qualitative evaluations and market research earlier is a benefit because it fits with strategic goals of saving money and marketing because it allows earlier termination of projects before it moves to next development milestones. Another way portfolio management aligns with strategy is through the risk structure. This shows the amount of risk during each phase of the development process, excepted cost per stage and the probability to lunch.