development time

Within the scope of a research project together with the companies Alcatel SEL, Conti Temic, Knorr-Bremse, Rohde & Schwarz and Webasto, a methodical approach has shown that many development projects have significant deviation from the planned process. This leads to negative effects on each success parameter of the development task, especially on time schedule and profitability. The objective of an optimized project management is to detect weak signals when differing the scheduled path. This information will be transferred immediately to project management. A concept was elaborated and effec-tiveness was proven in case studies.

Together with the companies Alcatel SEL, Knorr-Bremse, Rohde&Schwarz, Temic and Webasto by leadership of the author a BMBF sponsored research project has been carried out. The task and target of the project partners was to develop a reliable and workable forecasting model for duration and effort of an industrial development project. Up to now there is a lack of a systematic approach to forecast and to plan development time considering dynamic changes of the frame conditions. The following article describes the development and successful implementation of a forecasting model for development times and shows the effects by picturing and describing two case studies.