Project Leadership Teams: Our Approach at Engenious Design
- Posted by Melissa Nickel
- On May 18, 2021
At Engenious, we create new medical devices for our clients, and that starts with dynamic project leadership. Project leadership is essential to driving projects to successful conclusion. Our project leadership approach covers key needs while balancing workloads across specialist leaders who all bring something unique to the project.
While these titles are found in other organizations, it’s the combination that supercharges complex product development. We bring in Product Managers (what should we build?), Product Architects (how should we make it?), Project Managers (what’s the plan?) and Project Coordinators (details!), along with engineers, designers, technicians and others who make it happen as a team.
Product Managers
These project leaders are product-focused experts make the world better by translating pain points and needs into design features and market segments. They are energized by understanding what makes people love a product or service. Our Product Managers tend to be scrappy; using every tool imaginable to uncover hidden pain points, user needs, and gaps in the market. Tools include competitor research, deploying surveys, microsites, field research, and Lean Startup methodologies to validate markets for new products or develop a roadmap that drives product lines into new territory. They help define and uphold the project vision through project completion, and beyond. This project leader is focused on answering the question “what should we make?” and helping design teams translate these answers into action.
Product Architects
An engineering leader, the Architect designs at the system level while also contributing on detailed technical issues across disciplines. The Architect is a mature, stabilizing, innovative, forward-thinking influence amidst ambiguity and change encountered during product development. A cross-functional technical leader focused on answering “how should we make it?” and working with engineers and designers to make it happen.
Project Managers and Project Coordinators
They are instrumental team members who manage and coordinate all aspects of our creative product development projects. Creating something new is an exciting challenge and navigating the unknown yields opportunities to learn and improve. Our project managers/coordinators continually learn new things; implementing this knowledge rapidly to improve outcomes. They are empathetic, strategic, and tenacious. This duo could probably teach a master class on to-do lists and get an almost-unhealthy thrill from checking things off lists. Efficiency might be their middle name. They are a 10 on the attention-to-detail scale and constantly notice details that others miss. They are natural leaders that thrive in challenging, high-paced, and innovative environments. These positions focus on answering “what’s the plan” and minding the details to get it all done with a team.
No two projects look exactly alike, so we mix and match leaders with these skills to help teams create great technology products!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Melissa focuses on all aspects of business operations at Engenious Design. She is a strategic problem solver with a sense of urgency, productivity and positivity. Melissa’s passion for pursuing innovative solutions pairs well with her background in product development project management and current position coordinating collaborative teams of expert designers and engineers working on medical devices and advanced technology products.