14 Month Project Completed in 7 Months

How do you develop a highly complex medical device in a highly regulated environment in half the time—while you’re busy hiring new people?

As a result of an acquisition, a new division had seven months to hire engineers and launch a product before their next major trade show. However, their baseline plan showed it would take fourteen months to complete the product.

"The level of communication, the level of accountability, the visibility of progress is unprecedented here. So we are very happy with that."

                                                                              –Director R&D 

Fortunately, their Engineering Director had worked with the Playbook founders at a previous company. So rather than jump in and start development as fast as possible, they paused for a week and ramped up the development team on the Playbook methods and software. This allowed them to create flexible plans, communicate correct priorities, and keep everyone informed so that the project wouldn’t slip a single day without them knowing right away. It also created a great framework for getting the newly hired people productive very quickly.

Sure enough, seven months later they achieved their goal of making it to the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons conference where they received over 150 pre-orders for their product. Their early-to-market success netted them an estimated $15M dollars in extra profit.