About this issue

TWO of the articles in this issue deal with a problem that is receiving increased, but still not enough attention in RD&E management. This is the problem of estimation and prediction of costs, success, time-to-completion, and other uncertain characteristics of RD&E projects. Although analysts and students of the R&D process, such as Doering and Ebert, have increased their efforts to provide analytical methods for treating this essential area of management, their efforts unfortunately, are not being matched by practicing RD&E managers. Although the underlying theory and analytical techniques for handling estimates and subjective probabilities are far from being complete or perfect, there is a significant implementation gap on the management side with respect to 1) influencing estimators to provide more adequate estimates and 2) devoting their own efforts to further improving and developing the techniques for effectively generating and using estimates in project proposals and reviews. In other words, there is a severe implementation gap in our ability to improve RD&E estimating. It is, of course, not merely a matter of using improved analytical (mathematical or statistical) methods. The problems involve deep psychological and social-psychological factors such as individual risk-taking, group decision-making, organizational power relationships, individual competence and judgment, etc. Our state of basic knowledge about these factors is increasing rapidly as a result of academic research, and what is needed now is vastly increased effort on the part of management to develop this knowledge further by empirical and experimental means, so that it can be transformed into routine management tools for project selection and estimation. It is not a quick or cheap process, but in an era of shrinking R&D budgets and public disillusionment with R&D, it is an essential job that must be done.