When I began my medical device career, I started as a product development engineer. Part of the role included—right, wrong, or indifferent—project management. And I’ve found throughout my career and from discussions with hundreds of others in the industry that this is commonplace.

What I learned, however, a few years into my career is this: Just because you’re a product development engineer doesn’t mean you have any project management skills. I would even go so far as to state that most product development engineers are, in fact, terrible project managers.

Which poses the question: Why do so many medical device companies have product development engineers also serving as project managers?

I believe that project management should be its own discipline and function within a business. It probably should have a different organizational chart and reporting structures. During my early years of project management, I was taught, or at least learned, that this meant prolifically using Gantt charts and MS Project.

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