Abstract
A scheduling method has been developed for multi-task R & D Projects in which technical and market risk factors are critical issues. The R & D risk is controlled by stage-wise investment decisions and the use of real options of stage-wise development type. The project scheduling method employs the expected sum of total investment as a risk index, and minimizes the index through task ordering and task scheduling steps subjective to constraints. A risk directed ordering measure is introduced and extended to satisfy task order constraints for the first step, and the ordered tasks are scheduled by the dynamic programming for resource allocation at the second step. The project scheduling method has been successfully applied to a sample pharmaceutical R & D project, and the applicability of the method has been confirmed with numerical results from the two scheduling steps.
