MEDISYS CORP.

THE INTENSE CARE PRODUCT

DEVELOPMENT TEAM
 ORG BACKGROUND
• A privately held U.S.-based medical device manufacturer, was founded in 2002 with revenues reported to be $400 million
in 2008.
• Established rapport with 2 successful product in the market.
• Entrepreneurial had culture fostered innovative thinking in the company.
• Deep Pocket competitors were entering in to Medsys market segment with product designed to compete with
intensecare. Board noticed early sign of growth slowing in the org.
• New president, Art Beaumont, was hired in January, 2008.
• New President changed many thing, set up executive committee and further formalized process for product
development. He believed that medSys can only have completive advantage of early product launch over competition by
the use of cross functional team. Speed was the key.

• Beaumont created an Executive Committee consisting of 5 Vice Presidents from different functional areas, particularly:
sales and marketing, research & development, design and engineering, production, and administration. Beaumont’s
intention was to create an executive team that would formulate and implement an effective business strategy.

• He also created a cross-functional team, including people from all critical functions. This, as he believed, would speed the
product development.
 Art Beaumont
President

Len Broman Peter Fisher Arnie Frederick Zoe Thompson

Martha Hill
VP VP VP VP
VP
Design & Sales & Research & Administratio
Production n
Engineering Marketing Development

Dipesh Jack Fogel

Mukerjee Valerie Merz Karen Baio
Senior Aaron Gerson
Software Production Marketing Regulatory
Design Manager, Scientist
Managrer & Affairs
Manager IntensCare
IntensCare Business
Project
Leader
Leader
Bret O’Brien
Senior
Engineering
Manager

MEDISYS ORGANIZATION CHART, 2009

 PURPOSE & GOAL

Purpose:
A significant attempt to save peoples life
Goal:
To Launch an innovative, world class medisys product by aug
2009 and capture major market share.
 HISTORICAL PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT SEQUENCE

History: IntensCare had developed in typical MediSys fashion.

September 2006: R&D person gets inspiration for the product

October 2006: Sales person vets the concept in the market
December 2006: Conversations include software designer
June 2007: Ad hoc team presents product concept to senior leaders
July 2007: Senior leadership of MediSys allocate $500,000 to development of
IntensCare
January 2008: Beaumont hired as president
August 2008: Beaumont formalizes NPD and charters a core team to develop
IntensCare
August 2009: Projected IntensCare launch date
 WHERE IS IT NOW

Launch deadline: Aug 2009

In August 2008, Beaumont introduced a new parallel system for product development in which a ”core team” of
people assembled from all the critical functions—R&D, Marketing & Sales, Product Engineering, Software Design,
Regulatory, and Production—worked together continuously to move
a product from conceptual stage to final production. For every Project team there was a project leader assigned who
had cross functional expertise to manage the entire project.

As on February 13, 2009: IntensCare was behind on design, clinical testing, and production schedule.
• - The marketers were busy preparing a training video for technical installation and another for medical users;
• software designers in the United States and developers in India are working hard to meet the timeline.
• The engineers had their hands full with the space problem; and
• The production engineers were ordering components and arranging the assembly lines
• Regulatory was revising clinical test protocols and schedules

Top of that All the internal conflicts and competition pressure to launch early.
HOW WELL IS THE TEAM PERFORMING, AND
WHY

• Delays in hardware engineering -Due to the layoffs, 2 dedicated

intense care engineers had to work on other projects too.

• Delays in software development: Outsourcing decision

• The Modular Design: Serious debate topic.

WHY:
There is atmosphere of mutual distrust within the team. Team members
have negative feelings about each other; have no confidence in each
other’s ability and competency to work.
Weak communication channel and review mechanism.
Parallel development did not change the reporting and evaluating
procedures.
Tall organization structure Discouraged employee autonomy
ON A SCALE OF 1-5 ON EFFECTIVENESS, WITH 5
BEING MOST EFFECTIVE, HOW WELL IS THE
INTENS CARE TEAM PERFORMING?

2
Reasons: Team is running behind the schedule on 2 most
critical and basis of the whole project is Hardware
engineering and software development. Looking at the
deadline there is hardly any update of outsourced software
development delivery date and so IntensCare was behind
on design, clinical testing, and production schedule .
WHY WE SEE WHAT WE SEE

• There is not enough trust between employees and they are not
open for discussions.
• Lot of arguments on Modularity of end product due to very
aggressive deadline
• Some of the opinion difference between cross functional team
• Failure to adapt a proper strategy for parallel development process
• Software expected to be produced in India appears to be
notoriously buggy in medical devices.
 COMPLEX SITUATION

We consider this as a complex problems because of reasons

like
• Large no of variables involved (hardware software integrations / R&D
involvement, Marketing, Production)
• High Stakes involved (High performance pressure)
• Time pressure (Dead line to launch)
• No Inter-transparency.
• Communication problem
• Lack of Phycological security
• Distrust
 Symptoms and Causes

Delay in
Diminishing Visibility of
Conflicts Lack Of Design,
Growth Turnout
Trust Testing and
Rate
Production

Lack Of Individual Lack of Common Lack of Common

Familiarity Functions Purpose Approach
 Forces Affecting Behavior, Culture,
Outcomes seeing beyond their
Individual stakeholders Individuals are not
are not able to share
unique and relevant horizons and
information. They are departments which is
lacking the mechanism leading to non flexibility
to bring out unique and of integration
relevant information

Information
Knowledge
Motivation

Distrust and dominance

in the team. Individual’s
are jumping on the
quick solution on every
problem
WHAT IS AT STAKE HERE FOR THE
COMPANY

Company and its Reputation at stake

• Quality product within the set timeline

• Edge out the competitors- Be the first one to launch this type
of product
• Large Market share capture

• Profitability

• Launch Date Aug 2009

 PROBLEM FORMULATION

• No common Goal, approach or process has been followed.

• Poor design of the team and dynamics.
• Lack of clear priorities.
• Straddled sequential and parallel development
• Task conflicts are giving way to personal conflicts
• Team performance is not optimal
• Immense performance and time pressure are visible
• No centralise decision making
 Organizational
Root Causes Level
System
Complexity

Individual Level
Group Level
Cognitive
Shared Beliefs
Limitations
mpact of Time Overrun

• As per the economic model

developed by Mc. Kinsey

Time in 8 Quarters in 2
getting in to the market 6
month late reduces profit
Q6 by 1/3rd

Q4

Profit reduction by
1/3rd
Year

20 30
%
% each
Profit (10 units
3%)
mpact of Budget Overrun

• As per the economic model

developed by Mc. Kinsey
Budget overrun by 50%,
leads to only 4%
150 drop in profit level
%
10
Budget

0
Profit reduction by
4%

26 30
%
% each
Profit (10 units
3%)
 ACTION PLAN

• Red flag to be raised for Superiors involvement now.

• Define the Common approach for team to execute the project
• Restructure the team
• Joint Leadership should be conceived to involve Valarie along with Jack
• In house software development/Adding more team members
• Valarie, to overcome the production blocking through re-assigning the tasks to
increase individual accountability and rely more on expertise
• set-up the review mechanism and open the communication channel both within the
team and with leadership and work upon psychological safety.
• . To use adaption and work around the differences and work on a structural
intervention before quitting.
• Additional budget for resources required to meet the deadline
• Be adaptive and get along with the team member to finish the goal
• Use the structural intervention to break up groups into sub-groups and negative
stereotypes of another.
• Team should go ahead with the launch with modular design.
Thank you