0109. The Art and Science of Optimizing R&D Timelines in Life Sciences.

- Explore challenges and the fast-paced nature of R&D.
- Discuss the merits and demerits of the waterfall approach.
- Offer tips for maintaining momentum in short task sprints.
- Provide insights on optimizing R&D timelines.
- Highlight the importance of clear timeline structure and adaptability.
- Share practical strategies for managing R&D timelines and vendor onboarding.
- Equip listeners with tools for effective planning and communication in Lean by Design.

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Transcript

Oscar Gonzalez: 0:00

So we've been sending this off to some imaginary email box and no one has ever given feedback. Are they looking at it? If they're not, guess what? I'm going to stop and use this effort for something else.

Oscar Gonzalez: 0:18

Welcome to Lean by Design Podcast. I'm your host, oscar Gonzalez, alongside my co-host, Lawrence Wong. We are former MBA classmates turned business partners with over 25 years of combined experience in life sciences, from R&D through manufacturing. Our experiences have shed light into the complex, ever-changing challenges experienced by this industry and many others. We took a risk quit our six-figure paying jobs in Boston Biotech and Pharma to start Sigma Lab Consulting. Journey with us as we explore the relationship between people and workflow design, the goal to learn, inspire and deliver practical tips to navigate these ever-changing challenges. Stick with us and learn to work smarter, not harder, and be Lean by Design.

Oscar Gonzalez: 1:09

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the complexities of managing timelines in the fast-paced world of life sciences? Did you ever find yourself questioning the efficacy of traditional approaches to timeline management in the life science industry? In today's episode, we'll take a deep dive look into the complex world of R&D timelines, a topic you won't want to miss. We'll start by discussing the uniqueness of R&D timelines, especially when compared to more structured timelines that exist in regulated spaces. One of the key points we'll address is the role of contingency planning and how to inspire confidence in your leadership. We look into actionable strategies for crafting effective timelines that discuss the pros and cons of the waterfall approach while instilling flexibility. Then we'll look at the importance of adaptability of timelines and accountability of your team. But how do you prioritize? We'll touch on the best ways to prioritize tasks in short three-month sprints. So sit back and prepare to get new insights that can help you optimize your project plan so that you can become lean by design. So now we are finally back to recording on the podcast.

Oscar Gonzalez: 2:31

This is episode eight. How long has it been since we had the lunch right?

Lawrence Wong: 2:36

Too long. We were on a hiatus for quite a while to work with the livings. Yeah, a little bit of a hiatus.

Oscar Gonzalez: 2:42

Yeah, I mean it's conference season, a lot of client work going on, vacation, super quick turnover of vacations. So, believe it or not, folks, we actually take a break as well. We try to. Lawrence is better at that than I am, so I definitely need to do a little bit of work to pull myself away from computer and all these other initiatives that we have going on with Sigma and with our clients as well. So today, lawrence, I think you know what we're talking about, and I posted something recently about this on LinkedIn and it was in relation to R&D timelines.

Oscar Gonzalez: 3:25

Usually R&D timelines they're a bit tricky. They tend to be poorly put together and there's a number of factors that go into play. But a lot of you know some of the clients that we have been working with on varying sizes, from small, medium to large are all going to have sort of this conundrum of how well do you design your R&D timeline, how specific do you make it, what kind of milestones do you put in there? And a lot of it is in this future projection of this is what's going to happen when we do all this R&D. These are the activities that we're going to do and there's some danger in doing those things in such a level of uncertainty.

Oscar Gonzalez: 4:11

You know there's a big difference between crafting and managing an R&D timeline and crafting and managing a clinical operations timeline. You know you have on one end it's sort of the Wild Wild West right where you're still trying to figure out how are we going to create this new discovery in science, how are we going to create this new workflow for creating a product that gets us to X? And a lot of these companies I think you've seen it too, lawrence a lot of these companies are trying very novel techniques and approaches, which means the groundwork in the foundation hasn't been laid out yet. So how are you supposed to do a timeline that is really taking a look at technology that hasn't actually caught up or that hasn't been discovered, or pathways that haven't been discovered yet? How do you do a timeline for that? Yeah, I mean you should once it.

Lawrence Wong: 5:14

Could you, I guess from your post that you put together on LinkedIn, you know, kind of tell us what? What is the intent of the timeline for the folks that are in clinical operations versus if you are doing drug discovery? Because I think the intent is a little different, where in drug discovery you may not know what target like you said right what you're going after, versus a clinical timeline where you have to get a certain number of studies done in a certain amount of time and there's a kind of defined I would say there's more constraints around that versus the other end of it, where it's you're kind of letting the science guide you and obviously there's you know you have to fund the deliverables to, but they're not as I would say concrete, maybe as clinical operations.

Lawrence Wong: 6:08

That's my understanding of it. I don't know if you can clarify.

Oscar Gonzalez: 6:11

Actually, that's pretty on point. You know, I think the restrictions that come in clinical operations are, you know, they come from the entities, the FDA's, the EMA's, mhra in UK and Europe, and so there's these steps that you have to take in order to eventually submit for a new drug, a new device, you know, a new technology. And so those constraints as frustrating as they may be, that you have to play within the confines of this sandbox, it helps you structure your timeline because there are things that you have to have done that are already mandated the meetings that occur between FDA, ema, et cetera. There's certain cadences to them. Hey, if you want to, you know, speak to the FDA on this particular topic. That's a type C or a type B meeting, and those occur within six months of your filing, et cetera, et cetera. So you can start to look at when you have to actually deliver on the things that you put forth in that clinical trial. But also in the startup. It's pretty predictable because you have to have certain things done. You have to have site approval. You have to have regulatory, local regulatory approval. You have to have your FDA EMA approval. You have to have a completed contract. You need to have kits on site. You know there's all these logistics that are fairly straightforward in a clinical space.

Oscar Gonzalez: 7:49

Now with R&D you are really subjected to providing a detailed timeline. I've pulled out a timeline that was roughly just under 800 rows and I started on a project I think it was around six months after it started. It was about 800 rows long and there were dates and activities that were so far removed from what actuality was. And it kind of dawned on me that the approach that we often take to create these R&D timelines in this level of uncertainty is let's give enough information for leadership to feel confident that we can go from stage one all the way to the completed stage and eventually get into clinical trials. Those timelines are two, three, four, five years. You may get a head start if you're acquiring an asset and you get that data too. So you already know we can avoid doing experiments of this nature because we've already seen the data from our collaborator on the failure or the success. So let's start this stage a little bit further up and the challenge is how do you give enough information to leadership to help them feel secure that you have a good handle on things? But also it's my I guess you can call it my professional opinion, my personal opinion, the way that I do things. You want to start with the goals of that. You asked about what is the end game. And the end game in a clinical trial is to make sure that your startup is successful and smooth so that you can get patients enrolled as quickly as possible.

Oscar Gonzalez: 9:51

If it is a terrible disease that you could potentially have patients that are seemingly dying every day, every day that you have in delay and starting your trial may be a day that you're losing potential patients that could benefit from your treatment, and in R&D it's more of this kind of like. We need to get this train moving and we all have to push, and so that buildup is pretty slow. You know some of these when you look at the timelines and you look at these earlier processes within R&D. Typically, in those stages of R&D and those stages of innovation, you are still trying to decide. You know new CROs, new vendors, new collaborators. How can we work together? And within those there are contracts, there are budgets, there are, you know, all these different documentations that have to be aligned on with those CROs, those vendors, et cetera.

Oscar Gonzalez: 10:51

Once you're in a clinical space and you're kind of rolling. You already know who your business partners are and so you kind of you're in a little bit of a quicker ramp up. You know you can ramp up a clinical trial in as little as a couple of months from start to finish. Now in the R&D setting it is much longer, and so once you get to the point where you're actually doing science, it's like, okay, where are all these milestones? But typically we're building timelines based on projected activities or experiments. You get what I'm saying. So instead of really looking at what are the goals of all these different sections of development for our product that's going to eventually go to the clinic, we go. What are all the experiments that we're going to do? And, quite frankly, most people we don't know. We don't know.

Oscar Gonzalez: 11:44

It makes it very challenging to say, hey, what are the next steps here so that we could start building out the timelines, and you kind of get hands thrown in the air of like, well, I've gotten up to here before, but now we have to research. We have to kind of stop and do more research to figure out where else do we take this? So in reality, you would want to push the research and the execution of experiments at the same time. But the time it takes for you to conduct the research and to connect with other stakeholders within that team and then come to an alignment and say this is the best type of experiment for us to do. That gives us efficacy, data, gives us some PK, gives us some signaling, pathway data, et cetera, whatever your prerogative is. But that becomes such a challenge because you're riddled with unknowns.

Oscar Gonzalez: 12:40

But leadership wants to see that big old timeline that takes you all the way from concept of R&D concept into the clinical trial. So my mantra has always been would you rather have this timeline that's 800 rows long, of all these activities that may or may not even occur, that because of the changes in the timeline and in the setup, it has been hard to make adjustments. So now you have this 800 row timeline that has, I don't know, maybe 40 to 50% accuracy. The milestones are probably accurate, but everything else I wouldn't bet on it. Would you rather have that? Or would you rather have a timeline that's, I don't know, at the most 100 rows, 200 rows, and you're almost perfect on what you've executed on?

Oscar Gonzalez: 13:34

I think that it's important for us to allow that flexibility in those timelines so that, as the research, as the R&D matures, you're starting to. Now. You have this level of uncertainty that starts out here, and as you start to work, your focus starts to narrow so that you know exactly what you need to be doing, and then your, in turn, your timeline becomes more predictable and more structured, which makes it easier for folks to have conversations because you know what's coming in the future. The hardest conversations are ones that we have no idea. Who's supposed to start first? Who's leading that? When is that going to happen? What else do we need to do? Who else needs to be involved? When you don't know what those steps are down the line to some degree, those goals, those milestones makes it very challenging.

Lawrence Wong: 14:28

Yeah, I think one of the questions, as I was kind of looking at your post the last couple of days, is is it more important to take more time to be more accurate with your timeline or is it better to make fast decisions but be flexible, to change?

Lawrence Wong: 14:45

And I think kind of something that you alluded to is it depends on what you're trying to do at the end. Are you trying to outsource or partner with an external company or are you trying to hand this off to an internal department to kind of further develop? Because I think those will decide whether or not your timelines are that complex or simple, because you might be at a point where you have good enough data or study information to provide to that external partner and they might say that's satisfactory. Versus if you're handing it off to somebody internal, their requirements are going to be very different and they might require you to do a laundry list of things, which then requires your timelines to be much more extensive because you're handing it off to somebody that has, or somebody in your own company that has, established procedures and workflows.

Oscar Gonzalez: 15:33

Right, I think you're exactly right on that. You know there's a lot of differences that you'll see in timelines as it comes to the deliverables. You know the I guess the post that I had on LinkedIn and we'll tag it into the show notes so that you could take a look at and there's a quick video that goes over five steps and we could briefly talk about those in sequence. For those that are struggling to kind of put together an R&D timeline, I mean, this is a common thing that I see, a common theme that I'm seeing. You know, and it's not for lack of trying, and I think sometimes we try to do a little bit too much. You know, when we start to look at these timelines and look at what they mean at a high level, yeah, is you know how much is enough information for leadership? So, instead of you know, if we flip this around and say we're not, you know, necessarily looking at offloading this to a collaborator, but we need to report this to leadership, so how do we give them enough visibility into what's happening while not creating a timeline that's so dense that it loses its value? Because I'll tell you this right now in almost every instance that I have been managing timelines, whether it is for a clinical program, whether it's for R&D projects, whether it's for programs that are lead optimization programs going into the clinic, there is a lack of folks, a lack of desire to even look at those timelines. I get a very small percentage, I would say, of all the people that I've worked with that are on project teams or program teams. I'd say maybe 10% have any interest in looking at the timelines, why they're just so dense and there's no, there's no real.

Oscar Gonzalez: 17:35

When you start to look back at some of the older things, you start to go well, this didn't really happen, or this actually happened four times, but it's only here once. And then, when you look down on the timeline on the timeline that you know this particular task actually only happened one time and it's listed three times. You know you go through this and a lot of projects go through turnover. So it's important for us to be able to establish something that we can grow with, because R&D is growth. R&d is growth. In the beginning, you have a theory that something is going to work based on the technology that you're working on. However, it's a theory. Things are not built out, things are. You have to really push the train slowly while you're building, not just building the tracks, building the direction of the tracks. You know the goals.

Lawrence Wong: 18:27

We'll be right back after a quick break. Thank you to our sponsor, lauren Perna Communications, a Boston based digital communications firm for life sciences, healthcare and mental health companies. Life science companies have an important story to tell, but it's not always easy with the industry jargon. Lauren and her team turn your technical talk into compelling content that feels authentic to your brand and resonates with your audience. If you need help with your digital content or copywriting, visit LaurenPernacom to learn more about how they can tell your company's story.

Oscar Gonzalez: 19:02

One of the things that I mentioned was. So the first comment that I mentioned, the first tip that I gave in the post, was about using key dates from pre-launch documents. Now, you had asked me before offline well how is this different from when you brought into a project and you already have a crazy R&D timeline? So I actually went back to look at these key dates when is this JSC meeting? When are these JPD team meetings? When are these internal executive team meetings? When is this collaboration core team meeting? And I've been in projects that have had five or six layers of collaborators. So we just start to look at okay, when are we supposed to be reporting to these folks? So it's important to know that too. Oh, this one is quarterly, this one is monthly. You know we're expecting milestones of XYZ. Starting there, we can start to say, okay, well, now what are the parts that we need to process? So that second part is once you have those dates, those core dates, you can then start to look at creating stages such as your research, your development, your proof of concept.

Oscar Gonzalez: 20:16

I have seen timelines before that have been structured by the function. Now, the challenge with seeing timelines that are structured by functions is that they're not always the one, they're not always working at any specific given time. So you may have something and I don't know, we'll just say chemistry where they only are performing their task once the product or the experiments get to a certain degree. So they may have like six or seven, you know, layers of six or seven rows of tasks and things that they need to do, but they're, I don't know, a month, two months apart, because that's how long the pre work happens to get there. So when you start to layer in a timeline and you focus on the activities and you don't focus on the different stages, those activities and those functions, you'll start to find that predecessors are up and down your timeline. So it's like, instead of seeing what is a common theme for people when they look at timelines, to see this waterfall approach. That's the other thing. You have to understand who your audience is. It helps people to see this waterfall approach because they can see where the ending is of that subset of tasks, whereas when you go by function, okay, we have chemistry here on line forty two, and then the next stage is in biology, I don't know. Line a hundred and twenty seven.

Oscar Gonzalez: 21:51

Do you know how hard it is to look at a timeline where the predecessors are separated by fifty, sixty rows of data. Because then you get to the point where you say, well, why didn't, why didn't this, this date move? I put a predecessor and I plugged it in, but you're scrolling up and down To go. You go to the next ring like, oh, that predecessor is forty five. So you move up to forty five. Oh, the predecessor for forty five is a hundred seventy two. So you scroll down to a hundred seventy two. Oh, predecessor, is in five hundred. So you scroll down to five hundred and then go, oh, this is the date that I need to change. Because when you have predecessors, if you're not familiar with timelines, when you're using the software for predecessors, you cannot really overwrite what the dates are unless you take off the predecessor, and you usually want to keep that so that in the future you can go back to the timeline and say, well, this is the order that we made things happen.

Oscar Gonzalez: 22:50

So being able to kind of structure your timeline in stages doesn't matter. If you want, if you want to know who the function is, put a column and tag it. This is chemistry, this is biology. This is done by research team. This is done by the explorations group, this is done by, you know, discovery, whatever teams that you want to do, tag it that way, but make your. You know, here's our first run boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, one after the other, doesn't matter what function, and send.

Oscar Gonzalez: 23:19

Now that we've gotten there, here's our updated on the second version of that, because eventually you're going to do this iteration of develop, test, develop test, develop test, until you get to a certain point where you say, either this is enough or we've hit our target. And that's when. That's when you start to go to validation, get your lead, optimization, things like that. But it's this R&D that's in the middle. It's like, oh yeah, we're building a strategy. What does that mean? How long is that going to take and how does that fit into this? You know how do we provide that Clarity, and so you know it's super important to kind of look at those different stages.

Oscar Gonzalez: 24:01

And then that third piece is connecting with your team. So it's easy enough to go to the biology lead, the research lead, the chemistry lead, the pharmacothe, you know the PK PD lead whoever, and you know, talk to them about what are the milestones that you need to hit in your function and then you start to nest those. Oh, after research does this, we need to do that. After chemistry reviews the data for this, it's our turn to then do that. So once you start to elaborate on on what these different functions are, the actual experiments are less important. They will do that in their own project, in their, in their own sub team meetings, with their leadership, with their management.

Oscar Gonzalez: 24:51

But in terms of the project team, just hit me with the goals. Just hit me with the goals of what you're doing and maybe we'll put one or two pieces in there. But you know the specifying that we're going to look at. You know we're going to develop X, y, z that are all contingent on something that's going to happen six months. That's the thing. We connect all of these the straight line of science. And guess what, lawrence? Guess what does not happen in a straight line Science. So you know it's like you have to give yourself a level of flexibility because, coming from someone that's been doing timelines like crazy, it is so hard to look at a giant timeline midway through the project when you're brought in and go. I don't even recognize any of these tasks that are in here before.

Lawrence Wong: 25:49

Yeah, I think there's. We could probably do a whole episode on how you set up timelines and predecessors and things like that, because you can go super granular and then your timeline can balloon to like 8,000 rows, but then that's not exactly the thing you want to present to management, because you want to make it clear Where's the value.

Lawrence Wong: 26:08

And like that's not even manageable, right? So I think to your point about maybe creating, not decoupling them, but allowing some sort of connection between the work streams and the overall timeline probably helps the just the flow of information you might be. You know, unloading too much on your overall timeline that you, for the folks that are in those individual functions they don't necessarily need to know what all the other groups are doing and be able to separate that so it's more digestible for all the smaller teams below probably helps a lot too. And that goes back to understanding what are the functional goals so that you can build those activities in the right way and then somehow link it back to the overall timeline. But I think that really depends on the software or the you know the project management tool you're using and you know some people may not be using the right tool to manage those timelines, and I think that's a whole discussion in itself about selecting the right technology for that.

Oscar Gonzalez: 27:08

Yeah, I mean there's, you know there's a couple of different technologies that are out there and a lot of them are largely similar. And I think the complexity that you see in highly innovative, highly technological spaces like biotech, pharma, you know device industry, you know all of these medical device industry, all of these very highly technical spaces can have these timelines that can extend. You know the R&D, if you're starting from scratch, can easily hit five years. How do you build a timeline that, I'm sorry, makes any lick of difference over five years? Now I can see you creating a timeline that's roughly 18 months out and then doing milestones, doing key milestones that you know we have to do proof of concept here and feeling comfortable to edit and to modify. That is, you know, aside from connecting the goals and the milestones to all of these nested sub goals, it's so critical to feel empowered to edit those timelines. You know, put in the activity that didn't exist there before. Why? Because eventually you're going to want to come back to that timeline and say I need a story of what in the world happened in that project. What did we do in that project? And you're right, it's far easier to start with a timeline that allows for growth, rather than starting with a giant timeline and you are making adjustments, you know, six months in and adding new layers of things that have technically already been connected to things that are going to occur two years later. Are you serious? We have no idea. I don't even know if anybody on this team is actually even going to be here anymore. So how do you build a timeline in a way that not only provides value and insight to the project team, but also, in the case that somebody needs to come in I don't care if it's an absence or medical leave or vacation or something they can go to that timeline and go okay, everything that is above, you know, everything that happened before already has a status, that it's completed or withdrawn, etc. And the things that are upcoming are in progress and, you know, not started yet, because they start in a couple of weeks. But when you're looking and your timeline looks like Swiss cheese because it's we have activities up at the top some started, some pending, some ongoing, some completed and then in the middle it's the same thing. And then at the bottom of this 800,000 road timeline, it is again. It's very, very hard to say to sit down with somebody and go. This is what happened and this is where we're at, because you're just going up and down. So it's really, you know, feeling that, that empowerment to edit those changes, make those changes and allow the timeline to grow.

Oscar Gonzalez: 30:13

You do need a level of visibility, but that's where you can. You can reserve that for distant milestones. You know you should be able to in some way know around 12 to 18 months, at least in the beginning. And the reason why I say that is because in the beginning you have more development occurring and as you get toward the end of that R&D your focus narrows. So you know you can get all the way to lead candidate nomination, to optimizing that that candidate.

Oscar Gonzalez: 30:47

But then are you considering the documentation, are you considering the preparation for R&D, or you consider, you know where is that in those timelines? You know those are things that you have to get a team are we going to outsource? So in a way you need to know a little bit of what's happening in the next. I'd say around 18 months, but have a little bit of flexibility on how detailed that side of the timeline is going to be. And really you want the team to focus. You know about three months, about three months ahead, because in some cases the turnaround time for getting vendors on board can exceed some of those dates. But that's, that's the focus.

Lawrence Wong: 31:29

We'll be right back after a quick break.

Oscar Gonzalez: 31:32

Do you suspect your life sciences company could do things more efficiently? Maybe you're seeing costly workflow issues, or maybe the work feels more difficult to perform than necessary, affecting team around. If any of this resonates, reach out to the team at Sigma Lab Consulting for a free consultation on how we can develop and launch a custom solution fit for your team. Our consultants will build a custom workflow solution for your team to reach peak efficiency. Find out more at wwwsigmalabconsultingcom.

Oscar Gonzalez: 32:04

The post that we had on LinkedIn five steps to nailing that R&D timeline. I felt compelled to put that out there because these are challenges that are themes, you know, and the only way that we can improve in our you know, biotech, pharma space and improve what we're doing is to have a little bit more flexibility. And you know we use all of these tools. We excuse me, we put out all of these tools and we don't use a lot of them, and to me, that's waste.

Oscar Gonzalez: 32:37

I don't want to build a timeline that doesn't get viewed by a single person. So, instead of creating this giant timeline to let leadership have this notion of just like, oh yeah, in 2030, we're going to then establish blah, blah, blah. How you know where's the value in that it's good to have a vision, maybe give that vision to stakeholders, to shareholders, but with the project team, you know, do something that's maybe 18 months you know to start and slowly build that rolling train, you know to where it gets into its own little motion, and it allows people on the team to become invested also in their project, in their milestones and how their milestones and their work connect to the overall goals of the program.

Lawrence Wong: 33:29

Yeah, I think you know there's definitely a lot of, I think, nuances, depending on if you're working on a small molecule, large molecule, a cell and gene therapy and these timelines are. They change over time as the technology available to us evolves. Right, there are activities that and their strategy and their strategy change. There's, you know, changes to the business landscape. You know regulatory guidance and things like that. You know, looking back on all the timelines that you have worked on, what's the one thing that you wish you knew? You know when you started all this versus you know how the industry is now.

Oscar Gonzalez: 34:11

I mean, the one thing that I wish I knew. It's almost like it's a little bit of an art, I will say that, so I wouldn't say there's much that I wish I knew more. So the development of timelines. If there was, you know, everything that I kind of put into timeline development, management, execution. A lot of these are really just out of you know, out of by fire. You know trial by fire where I've been a part of various sized organizations. Some are super matrixed, where there's, you know, 15 people in a project meeting and they're all from different functions, some less so. So I've picked up a few things and, you know, unfortunately there's nothing really out there that talks about these complex R&D timelines. There's nothing really out there that says, you know, hey, try to start thinking about this or focus on these items or look for these for support, or look for documentation that may give you some dates or some inkling as to the duration of these activities. So there's a lot of material that is available and I think the kind of the creativeness of building a timeline is figuring out what to accept and what to ignore. And I'm not saying that we should ignore things that show up on a leadership timeline slide, but perhaps you know, create certain kind of placeholders of things that maybe have not been mentioned, just as like a reminder. And also, there's some cases where, if I'm gonna get this complex timeline from the research team, I'm not gonna put that. They're gonna test, you know, I'm gonna, you know, put a task item that says some level of, you know, development on the delivery molecule. I'm not gonna start listing experiments. You see where I'm getting at Because their experiments are going to deliver this milestone. Sorry about that, they're gonna deliver this milestone. So as long as I maintain this communication with them and I look at that and I know that they're running experiments, et cetera, et cetera, I don't have to list the 10 experiments under this nested item.

Oscar Gonzalez: 36:43

And I think sometimes that we find ourselves getting into that and it's, you know, the saying less is more. Try to think about 30,000 foot view and, like I said in the beginning, create a timeline that stops around 500 feet. You don't need a five foot view of everybody's activities because, a it's gonna drive you crazy trying to get that information and B they will change. They will change quickly and they will change without you knowing it until you show up to a team meeting and then you go well, my next 30 rows of timelines are actually nullified now because you changed your strategy. So you know we're running out of time, but I will leave us with this.

Oscar Gonzalez: 37:28

And I heard this I believe it was a Chris Doe podcast episode where he says focus on the goals, do not change those goals. Change your plan to achieve those goals. And I've seen this time and time again, not just on timelines, but on project and functional goals, where the goals are very task oriented. We will create this by doing that. Honestly, I have no clue if that's gonna happen Now. If we change that into something that says you know, develop an execute strategy for delivery that crosses blood brain barrier. Right there, you know it has to do that. You have to deliver something that crosses the blood brain barrier. We don't know exactly what we're gonna do to get there.

Oscar Gonzalez: 38:25

So what I've seen is a lot of folks will get their goals in the mid-year and everything changes. Everything changes. The goals should not have changed, but your plan to achieve those goals can change, and that's what you need to allow the flexibility in those R&D timelines. Those are timelines, man.

Oscar Gonzalez: 38:45

Timelines are crazy, they're hard, and when you come in the middle of it, half of it doesn't make sense. And then you get emails from other folks in the team that are new to say, hey, I don't think we did any of these experiments here. You know what? I agree with you. I don't think we did either. We've covered a lot of ground today, from the inherent uncertainties in timelines to practical strategies and the importance of contingency planning.

Oscar Gonzalez: 39:16

The key to any complex timeline is a mix of thorough planning, flexibility and strong communication with your project team, with leadership. So next time you have a complex project plan to put together, think about what you would prefer A fully baked timeline from the start that's maybe 20% accurate, or a timeline that is 60 or 70% baked and near flawless. Work smarter before you work harder. We'll catch you next time. ["snowfall"]. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to leave us a review, like and share on Spotify, apple and Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, and if you're interested in being on the show or becoming a sponsor, send us a message at Lean by Design, at SigmaLabConsultingcom.