Controlling R&D Projects: Framing a Process

The purpose of the following paper is to increase the control reliability for R&D projects developed in Tecnimont S.p.A.. The control process should provide accurate results to allow the realistic description of project progress, and it is more complex when dealing with R&D projects: the uncertainty for some activities complicates the process of assigning variances and, consequently, the schedule becomes less robust. The proposal of a control process came after a careful study of previous literature about project control. A strong emphasis was given to the planning phase: as the schedule serves as a reference for control, Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints – contaminated with elements from flexible methods and frameworks – is adopted to guarantee the baseline a stronger adherence to reality. The schedule higher adherence to reality was validated coupling the interview and the what-if methodology; these provided, respectively, a qualitative and quantitative proof of the effectiveness of the proposed control process. This control process appears to be reliant on a schedule that is more adherent to the events that can occur in reality. The higher accuracy of the schedule allows knowing more accurately which is the level of completeness of the project. By this means, it is sufficient to adopt a simple metric for project control instead of more complex algorithms (which are not always used in the industrial reality). Differently from some approaches such as stochastic and fuzzy logic, the control process is presented as a simple and pragmatic solution that can be adopted for R&D projects aimed at the development of industrial technology, including the construction of a pilot plant and the execution of experimental campaigns.