Our customer is a Nordic pharmaceutical company who has produced their drug for 90 years and who also produces injection tools. From being international market leaders they started to see their competitors develop more and more advanced solutions. For ten years they ran a project to develop a technically advanced solution which could be remotely controlled. Despite having spent large sums of money, the result was not satisfying and the project was discontinued. Syntell was contacted to perform a project revision. The task was to investigate why the project had failed and to propose changes in methodology to help avoid the same mistakes in the future.
What did Syntell do?
Syntell went through all written material to create an understanding about how the project was intended to be run and how things worked out in practice. Syntell also looked at the organizational processes of the company as a whole; sometimes the problem is not in the project itself, but in the supporting functions. Interviews with key people in different functions were performed. The analysis identified areas where alternative methods would have provided a better result. Syntell created a target for how similar projects should be managed in the future and what actions the company can take to reach that target. Syntell participated when the report was presented to the management team of the department. The report included a checklist divided into five areas; Management/Governance, Organization, Processes and Methods, Information and IT-systems. Syntell provided recommendations within all areas in order to help the management team understand the full picture. The report was used as a basis for changes in the organization; the customer changed their development process and assigned responsible functions for developing the methodologies. Syntell supported with coaching during the implementation of the recommendations and helped define templates for process support.
What added value did Syntell deliver?
One of the objectives of the report was to inform the customer about what areas are in need of change and development. Our customer realized the consequences of going from a simple product to a more advanced. The problem was that the new product combined hardware and software in a way that had never been tried before. The organization underestimated the complexity of the required software solution. Based on extensive experience from development of complex systems, Syntell were able to advice the organization on how to move forward.
Competences we used in this case:
