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Case Study_MustardSeed

Case Study

How a Project Management Office Accelerated Delivery by 124%

Business Sector: MedTech

A fast-growing medtech innovator needed operational discipline to match its groundbreaking science. With MustardSeed as a partner, the company built a fully integrated Project Management Office (PMO) from the ground up. The new PMO introduced portfolio-wide risk governance, resource planning, and real-time forecasting, creating structure without slowing innovation.

Justin Allen Quote, PMO Leader at MustardSeed (1)

Before vs. After: Transformation at a Glance

  • From untracked tasks → 76% milestone completion in 4 months
  • From siloed teams → unified resourcing with 35 scientists as “one team”
  • From anecdotal risks → portfolio dashboards covering 100% of active programs
  • From decision churn → operating reviews streamlined by 80%

The Challenge: Innovation Outpacing Execution

As the company grew, execution gaps started to compound:

  • Untracked tasks & weak accountability meant commitments slipped.
  • Critical path milestones weren’t understood or escalated to leadership.
  • Resources were overallocated, but leaders lacked proof to rebalance workloads.
  • Risks were casually discussed but never centrally tracked or mitigated.
  • No formal PMO existed; ad hoc project management was unsustainable.

For years, subject-matter experts had been managing projects on top of their day jobs. As pipelines expanded, this model became unsustainable. Leadership recognized the need for a centralized PMO to provide clarity, structure, and governance (before growth outpaced control).

 

The Solution: A Scalable PMO, Built from Scratch

MustardSeed designed, built, and ran a PMO embedded into the client’s dual-track operating model (New Product Introduction + Fee-for-Service). Key initiatives included:

PMO Infrastructure & Program Management

  • Deployed dedicated PMs across all NPIs and sustaining programs
  • Built Integrated Master Schedules (IMS) with baselines and dependencies
  • Standardized operating reviews, cutting prep time by 80%

Risk & Resource Governance

  • Delivered portfolio-wide risk dashboards
  • Centralized resource planning using Smartsheet Resource Manager
  • Converted siloed teams into a “one-team” model

Leadership, Data Visibility & Decision Enablement

  • Rolled out PowerBI dashboards for real-time financials & forecasting
  • Introduced Monte Carlo analysis for launch realism
  • Enabled confident decision-making with live dashboards

Change Management & Adoption

  • Overcame early resistance by embedding PMs directly into teams
  • Phased rollout balanced execution with cultural adoption
  • Shifted SMEs from ad-hoc project tracking to disciplined risk, schedule, and resource management
  • Built organization-wide trust through consistent wins and transparency
MustardSeed Execution Discipline

The Impact: Execution Discipline


  • Milestone completion jumped from 34% to 76% within 4 months.
  • On-time delivery grew from 18% to 53% in the same timeframe.
  • Standardized operating reviews cut prep time by 80%, freeing SMEs to focus on execution instead of reporting.
  • Meeting efficiency improved through centralized minutes, version control, and automated updates.
  • Portfolio-wide risk dashboards gave leadership a single source of truth.
  • Smartsheet Resource Manager shifted teams from siloed work to a "one-team" model with clearer capacity planning.
  • Monte Carlo schedule risk analysis introduced realistic launch forecasting.
  • ELT decision-making accelerated thanks to baseline tracking and integrated scheduling.

Strategic Takeaway

In highly regulated industries, innovation falls flat without execution discipline. MustardSeed doesn’t just build PMOs—we embed the systems, habits, and governance that turn scientific breakthroughs into business outcomes.

Client Confidentiality: We respect the privacy of the organizations that trust us to embed directly into their teams. For that reason, we do not publicly disclose client names in our case studies. If you would like to verify our impact and speak directly with references, we are happy to facilitate those introductions. Contact our team.

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