SWORD: the latest weapon in the project selection arsenal

This project addresses a current need of The Aerospace Corporation, a federally-funded research and development (R&D) center, to make appropriate project selections on a yearly basis. The technology roadmap concept was integrated with a discrete sequential stochastic dynamic program to model the project selection problem. We have created a software package (SWORD): Simulation With Optimization for Research and Development to implement the proposed model. SWORD utilizes a combination of COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) tools: Microsoft Project, Excel, Crystal Ball, and OptQuest to produce heuristic solutions to the NP complete problem. Included in the model are inputs, such as project cost and project probability of failure, that allow for the analysis of different R&D project selection strategies. The model will output a suggested R&D investment strategy for Aerospace for a variable number of years. Along with this, the model estimates the total utility, or total benefit, of pursuing that specific portfolio of projects along with numerous other performance statistics.