Managing a Clinical Applications Team
By Kimberly Spada

A manager of a clinical applications team may encounter many challenges in the day-to-day operations of the department, such as: meeting the needs of the customer, ensuring that competing priorities are balanced and handling system production issues. There are also challenges in dealing with performance issues, ensuring deadlines are met, maintaining current clinical systems, answering questions from the end users, providing representation at meetings to discuss new projects, meeting with customers to discuss requirements, investigating and resolving problems, and developing schedules to support key initiatives. As IT managers are faced with taking on new work without an increase in resources or budget, they must explore new ways of increasing productivity and efficiency within the team. Understanding the key dynamics of managing a team, as noted by Patrick Lencioni, and overcoming the following five dysfunctions of a team can be the answer for success.ⁱ

• Absence of Trust: Team members that are open with one another about their mistakes and weaknesses build a foundation of trust
• Fear of Conflict: Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in unfiltered and passoniate debate of ideas
• Lack of Commitment: Team members who cannot voice their opinions in the debate, rarely buy in and commit to decisions; even though they may agree with the decision
• Avoidance of Accountability: Without committing to a clear plan of action, team members often hesitate to call their peers on actions and behaviors that seem counterproductive to the good of the team
• Inattention to Results: Team members put their individual needs (such as ego, career development or recognition) above the collective goals of the team stifle overall project success

As a manager of a clinical applications team, it is critical for the team to have an understanding of how trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and a focus on results will improve productivity, increase the quality of the work completed and increase the customer’s opinion of team responsiveness when there is a production issue. Overcoming the five dysfunctions will take time; it requires discussion within the team and everyone must be willing to play an active role in ensuring the dysfunctions are eliminated.

The manager’s role in overcoming the five dysfunctions is critical. He/she should set the example for the team. They are also responsible for ensuring that meetings are focused on discussions where the team members have an opportunity to discuss issues, resolve the issues, and feel safe that their opinions and/or objections are not used against them. The manager may need to make decisions that one or some of the team members may not agree with; however, decisions may be supported if the team members have an opportunity to provide feedback.

By overcoming these challenges, the manager will be able to focus on establishing standards and clear expectations, developing a mechanism to track the volume of work coming into the department, understanding resource constraints, negotiating with departments regarding start dates for new projects that may conflict with current projects, and building relationships within the team.

For more information about managing clinical applications teams call us at (610) 444.1233 or email us at vcs@getvitalized.com. If you would like more information about the VCS’ services and solutions visit our website at www.getvitalized.com.