MAY - 2023LIFE SCIENCES REVIEW 19Identify Key Engaged Stakeholders: Transparency Does Not Have to Mean Equity This is a lesson we're still learning: just because people are holding a stake, it doesn't mean they have to ­ or will ­ participate in every part of the project. Except for my immediate team, this isn't anyone's primary function, and work getting medicines to patients always takes first priority. Some of our virtual meetings have had as many as 70 people invited. It quickly became obvious who regularly contributed, and versus those just observing. Use those passionate users, but make sure everyone has the opportunity to contribute.Especially in this age when providing a recording of a meeting with all the presentations is just the click of a button, we are working to reduce the size of the committees, and asking people to watch the videos, or read the notes ­ but remember it isn't necessarily in your vendors' best interests to provide you with those detailed notes of what they commit to. This has been leading to giving Europe less live time ­ but never none ­ as US time zone evenings work reasonably well for US and Asia.Communications become the most important part: regular (brief) newsletters, clarity on who must attend meetings (but open them to all), and readily available lists of open and resolved issues.Design for Use, Not Design for ConstructionIn other words, challenge your vendors. Don't limit the design to out-of-the-box, make sure that the vendors can provide the integrations that are essential to daily life. In the end our choice of RIM solutions really came down to how well it would play with our content management platform, since the submissions, labels, and correspondence stored there tie so closely into registration processes. The term "design for construction" comes from the auto industry where products are designed to reduce the cost to build... but that should never come at the expense of the usability by the customer.Find Time for Play, But Finish Your Homework FirstThe final vendor shootout for selection of RIM was done as a live sandbox environment, where we attempted to execute the use cases in the initial RFP. But those use cases were relatively narrow, and a tool like a Registration Management system needs to be able to handle more than that. Providing extra `office hours' for examination of the system in a more free-form manner helped significantly. On the flip side, engaging some of the remote teams ­ particularly where English isn't the first language and RIM system a very foreign concept ­ meant that more hand-holding was needed to ensure that they understood the scripts for the use cases.The project is still months from completion, but just getting to a choice was a major accomplishment. We are in another vendor selection project, and the lessons learned here are making that go more smoothly. That thankfully is offsetting other annoyances... but as Alton Brown says, that's another show. Don't limit the design to out-of-the-box, make sure that the vendors can provide the integrations that are essential to daily life
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