Year: 2015-16

Company: DuPont Pioneer

Liaison(s): Fall: Scott Betts Todd Jones Spring: Rissa Ream

DuPont Pioneer is the world’s leading developer and
supplier of advanced plant genetics and agronomic
support to farmers. DuPont Pioneer’s largest product is
hybrid seed corn; other major products include hybrid
sorghum, canola, wheat, rice, and soybeans, and seeds
containing desired traits introduced using advanced
biotech tools. DuPont Pioneer is committed to
increasing food production with high quality Pioneer®
products.
(Fall Project) Applied Technology Systems (ATS)
develops technologies for crop transformation, vector
construction, and genome modification. The TMP
team was asked to develop a user-friendly project
management (PM) tool to streamline management of
small R&D projects of key strategic value to ATS.
For fall, following an extensive review of several
cloud-based platforms such as Smartsheet®, the team
developed a wireframe depicting functionality of a
“Digital Playbook” containing a project plan, schedule,
milestones, and quarterly update support for ATS.
(Spring Project) Global Breeding & Marker
Technologies (GBMT) develops and processes assays to
determine genetic markers for DuPont Pioneer’s crop
breeding programs. The TMP team was tasked with
developing a system to record and leverage lessons
learned (LL), and a Project Portfolio Dashboard (PPD)
to visually convey the Project Portfolio health status.
Both fall and spring projects were designed to enhance
project management tools and techniques for DuPont
Pioneer scientists. To accomplish this, the TMP
team performed primary and secondary research to
evaluate various software packages and to identify best
practices.
The spring project addressed the difficulty many
organizations face when extracting information from
lessons learned archives. For GBMT’s needs, the team
used Excel® macros to build an archive that could
facilitate recording LL throughout the project lifecycle.
For a streamlined visual display of program level detail,
the team used Tableau® to generate a PPD dashboard
summarizing detailed data from numerous projects