Project Management in Pharmaceuticals

Abstract

Project management is the discipline of organizing and managing resources in a way that the project is completed within defined scope, quality, time and cost constraints. A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service. This property of being a temporary and one-time undertaking contrasts with processes, or operations, which are permanent or semi-permanent ongoing functional work to create the same product or service over and over again. The management of these two systems is often very different and requires varying technical skills and philosophy, hence requiring the development of project managements. The first challenge of project management is to make sure that a project is delivered within defined constraints. The second, more ambitious challenge is the optimized allocation and integration of inputs needed to meet pre-defined objectives. A project is a carefully defined set of activities that use resources (money, people, materials, energy, space, provisions,
communication, etc.) to meet the pre-defined objectives. Someone says that project management is an art, someone says as science. Project management is more, much more of an art than a science, and the application of project management is not consistent across industries, environments, and situations. Considering the uncertain world of pharmaceutical project management, this article will focus on the elements to form a pharmaceutical project.