R&D Project Planning with Q-GERT Network Modeling and Simulation

This paper describes a simulation study of two cases of research and development planning. The first case is for a series of R&D projects analyzed sequentially by a single R&D team, while the second case is for a series of R&D projects analyzed sequentially and concurrently by two teams. Q-GERT, a network technique, was employed for the modeling and simulation effort. This technique includes numerous network modeling capabilities which make it more applicable to R&D project planning than traditional network techniques such as CPM and PERT. The simulation results for each case in terms of project duration statistics and outcome probabilities are presented in detail. The trade-offs between the two cases (i.e., single team versus multiple team analysis) are discussed.