Portfolio managment:Layout 1 14/1/10 20:10 Page 13
Business
pipeline priorities changed and it became necessary Table 1: Project criteria. Key players evaluate individual projects across four criteria. Averages
to re-evaluate the ongoing investments in
of Unmet Need, Feasibility and Value are used in plotting charts as in Figures 2 and 3
Translational Medicine.
A number of tools were developed to aid in Fit How clearly aligned is the project with the
assessing the fit, value and impact of the large port-
strategy of R&D?
folio of Translational Medicine projects. A data-
driven scoring tool was established to facilitate
Unmet Need How large and how well defined is the
knowledge gap? How essential to the
impartial discussion between the various internal
success of the pipeline asset is it to fill this
customers and allow consensus building. Projects
gap?
were scored by a panel of internal customers from
both the Discovery and Clinical branches of R&D.
Feasibility What is the probability of successful
Four criteria were scored; Fit, Unmet Need, Value delivery on time to impact critical pipeline
and Feasibility (Table 1). Figure 1 depicts a grid
decisions?
plotting feasibility (risk) versus value (reward) with
regions of the grid identified as risky, balanced or
Value How critical will the deliverables from the
project be in informing pipeline decisions?
safe projects. Depending on the goals of the organ-
isation and its tolerance to risk, an appropriate
spread of projects can be determined (Figures 2
and 3). Actions can be taken to move the portfolio
toward this ideal distribution and yearly re-exami- of delivered value to the Wyeth organisation. The
nation of the portfolio can be used to maintain the executive management group will have made a sig-
agreed-upon project distribution. nificant investment of resources in establishing
Governance of projects initiated by a core tech- these core technology groups. As such, they are
nology department has a number of challenges interested in understanding whether the investment
compared to projects initiated within Therapeutic has delivered value to the organisation in compre-
Area departments. As a service department, the hendible terms. The PPM group’s value in this case
needs of multiple internal customers spanning the is to extract the scientific deliverables from these
organisation must be met. With a single budget groups and articulate them in terms of benefit to
and centralised resources it is simpler to have a the business in a digested manner comprehendible
centralised governance body with representation to the executive management group. The added
from the different departments that are internal value of the PPM group here is its understanding of
customers. This allows transparency across the the interconnectivity and dependencies of projects
organisation and facilitates prioritisation of work across the organisation so supporting the articula-
supporting multiple pipeline projects. This form of tion of value.
governance also has the advantage of efficiency in
that a single meeting can deal with all supported
areas. At its inception, it was this form of gover-
nance that was used to prioritise resources for
Translational Medicine.
A drawback to centralised governance is that
individual supported departments may not feel
they have adequate ‘skin in the game’. This could
lead to decreased support as the realities of scien-
tific research are manifested and changes in
pipeline priorities result in a loss of value for ongo-
ing work. After realignment of the Translational
Medicine portfolio, it was decided that a more
direct involvement of Therapeutic Areas in the
governance of TMed projects was required.
Governance was decentralised to the appropriate
Clinical and Discovery Therapeutic Areas.
This decentralisation increases the value of PPM
leadership in these roles for its ability to assess,
from a dispassionate perspective, the overall
impact of any core technology deployment in terms Figure 1: Risk versus reward chart
Drug Discovery World Winter 2009/10 13
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88