Two-stage Decision-making Procedure And Technique Based On The Scope Change In Research And Development Projects

Innovation is an eternal subject and the source of sustainable development to enterprises. Product is the final visible output of an enterprise as well as the carrier of enterprise's innovation. It is an essential requirement for global competition and knowledge-based economy to pay more attentions to new product development management.The most difficulty in new product development management is the existence of high uncertainty including random and fuzzy. Therefore, it used to cause project scope change when people start a new product development under high uncertainty environment. For the management team, it is knotty and unavoidable to manage the scope change and study the issues during the management.This dissertation introduces a two-stage decision-making (TSDM) procedure and technique based on the scope change in Research and Development (R&D) projects in order to reduce the development risks and the failure rate for new products. The principle idea of TSDM procedure and technique based on the scope change in R&D projects is as below: when project stakeholders present project scope change, the project team will have to carry out a TSDM procedure and technique based on availed project conditions for original route, comparison with alternative proposals. Therefore, the project team can conclude the best project scope. During this process, Bayesian theory and its detailed practice have been used to set up the calculation models. Firstly, project team list the prior information, make the adjustment for probabilities when project conditions change, then calculate posteriori probabilities under the available project conditions. Project team will redo assessments for original decision-making results which have been adjusted by the posteriori probabilities, determine whether it is still reasonable and whether project manager need do TSDM. In the last, this dissertation uses a case from R company to test the TSDM model and working process.The benefits to do a research on TSDM procedure and technique based on the scope change in R&D projects theory are as below: to help enterprises to make decision making for new products more scientific and reasonable; to improve the effectiveness and accuracy for project scope change management; to insure enterprises to fulfill the new product development in the best project scope; to improve success rate of new project development and to produce successful products.