No company has time or money to waste, says Jackie Kent, senior VP, head of product, Medidata. “Patients are waiting for medicines, and if we can’t improve functionality fast enough for sponsors to deliver new medicines we’re not serving our customers,” she says. “We eliminate waste all the time by using an agile method that allows us to communicate frequently. It serves the changing needs of the industry better than anything else especially a traditional waterfall method.”
Medidata has implemented an agile process for the development of new features for many of its technology products. “We can deliver new functionality in eight weeks not six months,” Ms. Kent says. “It’s a much tighter ecosystem and it serves both partners and sponsors much better. It also lets them give us feedback that we can then employ and turn around new functionality quicker.”