PDA Letter Article of the Year

Each year, the PDA Letter editors and the Editorial Committee identify the top articles published that year based on reader interest and select the one that best encapsulates PDA’s mission of connecting People, Science and Regulation^®.

The award is given to the author(s) at the Awards Ceremony, held each year at the PDA Annual Meeting. The 2021 honor was awarded to the article:

The Modern Quality Professional Development Tool

Part 1: Developing a Capability Matrix for Product Quality Leaders

Part 2: The Case Studies

Part 3: Using the Scoring System

Authors: Stephan Krause, PhD, Adele Chambers, Ryan Courtney, Darrin Cowley, and Anthony Mire-Sluis, AstraZeneca

In Part I of their three-part article, “The Modern Quality Professional Development Tool,” the authors describe the tool they created to frame a vision of the quality organization AstraZeneca aspires to achieve. “Developing a Capability Matrix for Product Quality Leaders” explained how the MQP tool uses relevant data, tools and analytics to make sound judgments in pursuit of the true root cause in any issue, including an individual’s lifelong learning journey. Anthony Mire-Sluis, SVP, Head of Global Quality, AstraZeneca, said, “The MQP program has not only identified the capabilities necessary but provides the relevant training and experience to achieve its aims…[and] is having a big impact on the success of the Quality organization.”

Using the Product Quality Leader (PQL) job function, Part II: “The Case Studies” demonstrated how the team used the MQP tool to develop and support “capability uplifts” for both individuals and teams. The case studies illustrated how capability target levels were set for the categories relevant to the role and how the level descriptions were revised to fit PQL-specific job tasks, increasing the flexibility of resource allocation within the Quality organization.

Part III: “Using the Scoring System” discussed how the authors devised a scoring system to identify capabilities and how they used those scores when planning job-specific capability uplifts. The PQL scoring was performed using “half levels” (e.g., 2, 2.5, 3), which allowed for greater flexibility in scoring and provided a more graded approach to monitoring improvement. Adapting this tool to job functions allowed development of clear objectives regarding the capabilities needed to uplift and helped identify short- and long-term capability gaps for future planning.

PDA congratulates the authors on receiving the 2021 Article of the Year Award! We appreciate their sharing their knowledge to help improve and maintain high-quality standards in the industry.