The language we use at work has changed dramatically over the last couple of years. Terms such as ‘sprint’, ‘waterfall’ and ‘scrum’ have filtered through from the tech industry, and it is rare to go a week without the mention of ‘Agile’.
In this article, Prescient team members, Maxine and Melissa, discuss why, as an industry, we are so fixated on the Agile strategic approach.
Maxine briefly highlights the benefits of the Agile approach, which includes innovation, rapidly improved productivity, being a true team member, focusing on value and strengthening capability. She states that taking the concept of Agile and making it practical is positive, with the belief that this approach can help ensure our strategy, planning, capability and launch thinking can flex and overcome challenges to meet expectations, and that the industry can truly benefit from one of the most revolutionary methodologies at our disposal.
The magic ingredients to make ‘Agile’ work for pharma
The ‘Agile’ methodology is very powerful when used effectively. Many teams are making huge strides by accessing the benefits of working collaboratively using Agile for the delivery of digital solutions.
But can Agile be a strategy development tool in pharma? Can it help with planning or launch or the introduction of new capabilities? Through our work with clients, we have increasingly seen that by taking a very practical, accessible approach to Agile, it can catapult teams forward in their productivity, cross-functional teamwork and innovative thinking.
So, what seems to be the magic ingredients of success?
- The first magic ingredient is to ensure that it is applied to the right problem.
Agile works when applied to a specific question or challenge, when the answer is not clear, or when different approaches have failed in the past, e.g. large cross-functional team projects. It doesn’t work well when the teams know the answer they seek, and they want to ‘bring people on the journey’ or gain specific input. So, we don’t believe Agile works well for completing brand plan templates, but looking at how brand planning can be more customer-centric is a great challenge to be tackled in this way. Equally, it can be applied successfully where the subject matter expertise is important, when sharing experience is critical and where it is complex to access appropriate solutions, e.g. how to maximise artificial intelligence in rare diseases.
- Secondly, you need leadership buy-in. A leader who is bought into the concept of Agile provides space for the team to work, empowers the team to make decisions and doesn’t let perfection be the enemy of productivity, which is vital.
- Finally, you need to get the team right. The SLAM (self-organising, lean, autonomous and multidisciplinary) team must have no more than six people to be productive and to move forward at speed. The product owner needs to champion the needs of the user and ensure that they are front and centre in the development of the solution. Finally, the team needs to be facilitated by an expert scrum master.
We have acted in the scrum master role for over 200 pharma clients and have found that having an external scrum master with deep subject matter expertise, who can also bring other elements such as design thinking or behavioural economics, enables teams to move forward rapidly as they know what to listen for and can connect Agile to the core of the challenge to drive a different output.
So, what are the benefits, I hear you ask?
We have found that by taking this practical approach to Agile, we can help teams to:
- Innovate – pushes the team to think beyond normal approaches and builds on innovation across the industry and beyond
- Rapidly improve productivity – solve the problem in half the time on average
- Be a true team – forges cross-team collaboration
- Focus on value – allows teams to focus on high-value activities and reduces unnecessary discussions
- Strengthen capability – equips teams to resolve challenges together in the future
We have had excellent results using this ‘Prescient Practical Approach to Agile’ when working with the World Health Organization and a pharmaceutical company to create a 12-month action plan to introduce critical medicine to less developed countries; with a digital and core team to co-create a new digital platform with customers; with a leadership team to inject innovation by co-creating an approach and materials directly with customers; with an access team to develop a new remote-not-distant concept to support system change post-COVID-19; with a cross-functional team to create an innovative pathway to shape tender requirements in a rapidly changing environment; and with a global launch team to create a launch plan with local team input and engagement, to name just a few!
The response to taking this concept of Agile and making it practical and tailored for our team’s cross-functional way of working and the wider industry has been overwhelmingly positive. As execution speed expectations increase, we believe this approach can help ensure our strategy, planning, capability, and launch thinking flex and overcome challenges to meet these expectations, and that we, as an industry, can truly benefit from one of the most revolutionary methodologies at our disposal.