Project Management in Pharmacy Informatics – A Starting Point
by
Maritza Lew
It’s a time for new beginnings, launching new projects, and sharing tips of the trade. Over the years, after doing numerous projects, I was given an opportunity to learn the art of project management and making things happen. Previously, I would complete projects but not really sure how it all came together. In fact, we once had someone from our vendor come out to document the process we had used to implement decision support in our old system and our team sat there with a sudden case of horrible amnesia. Since that time, project management has allowed me to balance trade-offs between scope, time, and costs and has allowed our team to have full documented recollection of each journey.
Project management helps bring sense to the madness that a project can appear to be at first glance. Managing resources, time, and scope can be quite challenging when there are competing projects going on in the hospital. If you ever find yourself in this situation, fret no more, here’s a good tip to getting started - start with a project charter or scope document. Regardless of project size, a document formally stating the intent of the project brings structure to manage all phases of the project. I like to use SMART goals; meaning they are Specific, Measurable, Agreed upon, Realistic, and Time managed. These goals are a way to define the project phases and end goals. There are many templates online that can be modified for your needs.
There are other documents within project management that are helpful as well. At a minimum, the essential documents include a schedule for due dates and a timeline, status updates for the hospital, change management document that logs any changes to the original intent and impact to the project with respect to resources or time, and finally a closing document for approval by your key stakeholders.
There are many tools that can be used to pull the project together. But, getting to a good start is the most essential!