Heavyweight Project Team

What is a "heavyweight project team" and how does it differ from the traditional approach used by Eli Lilly?

A heavyweight project team comprises of individuals from various functional groups working under the authority of a team leader, who experience and expertise of that the project area and has a significant clout in the organization, and often co-located to ensure better integration and coordination amongst the team members. Few important characteristics of heavyweight project teams are:

 Well defined Business Charter - Heavyweight project teams have a very clear business charter designed and approved by senior management.

 Co-location and cross-functional - Most of the time members from individual functional areas and co-located to the same place.

 Heavyweight project manager - Project is led by a senior manager from the organization that has authority to pull resources when required.

 Ownership, Accountability and Commitment- There are well defined, documented and measurable deliverables with timelines for each of the team members. e.g. Contract book being used by heavyweight project teams at LRL

 Executive sponsors - Projects are sponsored by senior executives who also guide team and resolve conflict between project team and rest of organization.

 Powerful Team Leader- Team leader has access to and responsibility for work of everyone involved in project.

 System Solution Focus -Emphasis of whole team is to develop an integrated system solution for customer needs rather than focus on end states of individual groups.

Traditional Approach for Development

Traditional project teams consisted of members who worked on 4-5 different projects simultaneously across all of LRL. The functional manager has higher authority over the team member than the team lead. Multiple projects were being managed by a project manager, functional team also assigned to four five projects. There was little accountability on a project-by-project basis. There were no systems to track resources and measure progress of individuals. Hence it was impossible to diagnose specific reason for delay in detail. The focus was on end results of individual groups rather than final integrated solution. Tracking individual performance and relating it to project progress was very difficult. There was no clearly defined project plan and hence roadblocks and internal & external interdependencies could not be determined and plan for future uncertainties could not be made. The teams lacked coordination and issues were discussed only once in a month leading to delays. All these issues were not present in heavy weight project team.

However, an important of concern for heavyweight project team is how they work with rest of the organization and how the conflicts are being managed between the project team and rest of organization. This may alienate rest of organization and can hurt other development activities.

What is your assessment of the performance of two heavyweight teams described in the case? What factors contributed most to these performance results (choose the factors and the performance metrics that you think are most important)? In the pharmaceutical context, how far back in the development process should heavyweight teams be deployed? Why?

High development costs, long development times and shorter time of exclusivity