Episode 119 – A Project Story: The COVID-19 Sprint

The podcast for project managers by project managers. As the COVID pandemic began to unfold, staff at an Israeli hospital knew that clinical teams were going to be at high-risk and critically over-burdened.  The COVOD-19 Sprint project united doctors and developers to find creative technological solutions to the medical challenges of the pandemic.



Table of Contents



02:19 … Meet Marina04:36 … The mission of the COVID Sprint07:30 … Volunteer Response09:45 … Marina’s Role in the COVID-19 Sprint10:14 … The Multiple Teams addressing the Challenges11:41 … Remote Collaboration13:32 … Information Sharing15:25 … Remote Leadership17:09 … Encouraging the Team19:08 … Technology Challenge for ICU Patients22:08 … Patient/Staff Protection: Portable Tent23:25 … Sharing Breakthroughs23:54 … COVID-19 Sprint Timeframe24:26 … Biggest Surprises26:03 … Lessons Learned28:51 … Hear more about the COVID-19 Sprint29:56 … Closing



MARINA DARLOW: Nobody really knows what we’re doing.  We are all improvising.  We’re all doing it to the best of our ability.  And we’re all  putting everything we had.  So in this case you’re not alone in being uncertain.  And you’ll be just fine as long as you’re engaged.  People make mistakes.  We adjust, you know, like Agile methods.  You do the best you know.  And when you know better, you do better.  And you’re very much not unique in this.  All these amazing people that you work with, they operate kind of in the same mode.



WENDY GROUNDS:  You’re listening to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  To our listeners, don’t forget to claim your free Professional Development Units when you finish listening to this podcast.  I am Wendy Grounds.  In the studio today with me is Bill Yates.



BILL YATES:  Hi, Wendy.



WENDY GROUNDS:  We have a very interesting project that we’re going to talk about.



BILL YATES:  Yes.



WENDY GROUNDS:  It’s about a project that’s in Israel, which united doctors and developers to find some creative solutions to the COVID-19 challenges.  The hospital is the Israeli Hospital, Assuta Ashdod.  They knew that the clinical teams were going to be both at high risk, and they’re going to be severely overburdened when the COVID pandemic started to unfold.  And so they started the COVID-19 Sprint.



BILL YATES:  Yeah.



WENDY GROUNDS:  And our guest that we’re talking to today is Marina Darlow.  She was the technology projects manager and the operations coordinator of this sprint.



BILL YATES:  Yes.  Marina is going to share a lot of information with us.  Just how much they accomplished, how quickly; and how they brought together talent from the medical field, from hardware, software, technology solutions that is pretty mind-blowing.  There’s some abbreviations that we need to cover, too.  So I think everybody’s familiar with AWS, so Amazon Web Services.  Amazon Web Services Israel, specifically.  There’s also mention of the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force.  They were a part of this initiative with the hospital.  And also Rafael, the Israeli defense organization, so that gets mentioned, as well.



WENDY GROUNDS:  I’m really excited that we’re heading to Israel to talk about our project.  I have been trying to get many international projects, so this one is kind of exciting.



BILL YATES:  We’ve been to space; let’s go to Israel.



WENDY GROUNDS:  Marina, welcome to Manage This.



MARINA DARLOW:  Thanks for having me.



Meet Marina



WENDY GROUNDS:  You are from Israel, and I’m very interested to hear your story, why you moved over to the U.S., and how you experienced that as a career change.



MARINA DARLOW:  It’s been a while, actually.  We moved for my husband’s Ph.D., decided that the program he wants is only available at Brown.  And it was clearly an adjustment.  The culture is different.  I’m used to much more, was used to much more direct and abrasive, some say obnoxious, way of communicating.  So I had to temper down and learn to smooth the r...