Traditional methods of R&D management

"Double-post system" is a solution put forward by many domestic scientific research enterprises for the loss of intellectual property rights caused by personnel flow. The so-called "double-post system" is to set up two posts in important positions in the R&D process to complete the same work and back each other up. The main problems brought by the "double-post system" are:

First, because important positions use two sets of people and two sets of equipment to complete the same work, human resources and equipment resources are wasted;

Second, if the results completed by the two teams are inconsistent, the confirmation cost will increase;

Thirdly, there are many links in R&D process, such as development process: design, simulation, debugging and testing; Development stage: principle parts, engineering parts, process parts, test parts, trial parts, etc. If the two versions generated by two people have to pass all the links in the verification process, it will greatly increase the development cost, development cycle and waste of resources.

Because the development cost and development cycle of each "double-post system" are almost doubled, if there are multiple "double-post system" posts in the product development process, the whole development cost and development cycle will explode.

2 "Important parts are broken down by many people"

"The important part is borne by many people", which is another solution put forward by many domestic scientific research enterprises for the loss of intellectual property rights caused by personnel flow. The so-called "important part decomposition, multi-person commitment" means that in the process of R&D, important parts and links are decomposed by multiple people. "The important part is broken down by many people? Quot The main question is:

First, if the important parts and links are decomposed into tasks, it will increase the communication overhead and cooperation cost within the system;

Second, if the principle that important work is undertaken by important people is adopted, if important people no longer undertake other important work, it will cause a waste of human resources; If important personnel also undertake other important tasks, if once personnel flow, it will cause the loss of intellectual property rights of many important tasks, which will involve more and more influences;

Thirdly, because there are many links in the R&D process, the decomposition of important tasks and the participation of multiple personnel will greatly increase the R&D cost and development cycle.

3 "reporter" research and development methods

Acceptance subject: project acceptance according to the requirements of superior leaders.

Interview materials: Search and define the market demand by yourself.

Self-induction: Self-induction of the functional requirements of the approved system.

Free play: the realization of independent and free completion function

Finalize by yourself: define the standards for testing and acceptance by yourself.

The main problems existing in the "reporter-style" R&D management method are as follows: First, the whole R&D process is controlled by individuals, from receiving tasks (accepting topics), collecting requirements (interviewing materials), defining functions (self-induction), independent research (free play), self-testing (self-finalization) to task delivery, which is limited by personal cognitive ability. Especially in today's knowledge economy society, knowledge explosion, professional division of labor and technical synthesis are the main characteristics of knowledge economy, and individual cognitive ability is far from meeting the needs of society;

Secondly, due to the limitation of individual professional division of labor, the "reporter-style" R&D management method often only highlights the application of individual professional fields and ignores the effective intervention of other professional fields; For example, hardware engineers only emphasize the effectiveness of hardware design, ignoring professional applications such as system design, simulation analysis, software design, hardware testing, software testing and system synthesis;

Thirdly, the self-defined testing and acceptance standards belong to our own legislation and law enforcement, which violates the basic principles of quality control and final confirmation of R&D products.

Fourth, the "reporter-style" R&D management will lead to intellectual property falling into personal control.

4 "Step by Step" R&D management method

Decision-making on topic selection: superior leaders

System function determination: it is determined by the ability and understanding of the individual who undertakes the task book.

Development state control: the project team is decentralized.

Results Test Confirmation: User-defined test and acceptance criteria.

The main problems of "step-by-step release" R&D management method are as follows

First, taking responsibility transfer as the main line of R&D control process and task book as the goal of R&D task completion, ignoring the control and inspection of R&D process and development status nodes;

Second, it is difficult for the responsibility book and the task book to fully reflect the market demand and product function definition, which is completed by the task team, so it is limited by the cognitive ability of the task team, and it is difficult to reflect the multi-professional system synthesis and the effective play of the overall level of the enterprise, resulting in the decoupling of product development goals from market demand;

Third, each task group takes the task book as the goal of R&D task completion and the responsibility book as the delivery status, which leads to difficulties in technical coordination and system synthesis among task groups, and it is difficult to effectively achieve the overall goal of the system;

Fourthly, each task force determines its own test and acceptance criteria according to the responsibility book and task book, which not only leads to its own legislation and enforcement, but also violates the basic principles of quality control and final confirmation of R&D products. Moreover, due to the different angles and cognitive abilities of each task group, it is difficult to unify the test and acceptance standards defined by each task group and form a unified test and acceptance standard.

5 "patch" research and development method

Egocentricity: self-centered, unwilling to cooperate with others easily.

Self-enclosure: Take one's own technical ability as the overall technical status of the project.

Self-development: self-enclosed development, unwilling to let others know and make suggestions.

The main problems of the remedial R&D management method are:

First, it is easy to be individual-centered, and the individual's cognitive ability determines the technical state of the project;

Second, self-enclosed development, unwilling to adopt mature technologies and new technologies beyond their cognitive ability, starting from the bottom and repeating at a low level;

Thirdly, the lack of standard design increases the fuzziness of product technology realization and makes product maintenance and upgrading difficult;

Fourth, intellectual property rights are in the hands of individuals, which easily leads to the loss of intellectual property rights. Step measurement method

As early as 1986, American PRTM company founded PACE (product and cycle time excellence) methodology. PACE pays attention to the following elements: correct decision-making, project team composition, structure of development activities, development tools and technologies, product strategy, technology management and resource management. PACE can be regarded as the originator of methodology in the field of product life cycle management. After the birth of PACE, many enterprises and academic institutions constantly put forward R&D management methodology suitable for this industry.

ISO9000 family quality system

In order to meet the needs of quality assurance activities in international economic exchanges, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) issued ISO 9000 series quality management and quality assurance standards in 1987 after nearly ten years' work on the basis of summarizing the experience of quality assurance systems in various countries. 1994 was revised for the first time, and the ISO 9000 family standard was formed. In 2000, a major revision was made and a new ISO 9000 standard (version 2000) was released.

CMM/CMMI

1986165438+1October, the federal government of the United States entrusted the Institute of Software Engineering (SEI) of Carnegie Mellon University to develop a set of methods for evaluating the capabilities of software contractors. SEI released a software process maturity framework and a maturity questionnaire in September 1987. 199 1 year, SEI developed the software process maturity framework into a software capability maturity model (CMM), and CMM 1.0 was born.

Project management knowledge system (project management body knowledge)

Project management knowledge system is the general name of project management professional knowledge, which was put forward by Project Management Institute (PMI) in 1980s and summarized the mature theories, methods, tools and technologies in project management practice. After several revisions, the latest version is PMBOK2004.

PMBOK is defined as 44 basic project management processes, and the detailed description of project management processes is given from the perspectives of process input, output, tools and technologies adopted. These 44 project management processes basically cover the basic management processes in project management practice, but these project management processes must be combined with the product realization process to complete the whole project activities.

Agile development

RUP

Problems often encountered by enterprises in R&D management

(1) Because there is no goal and direction, there is no clear R&D strategy.

⑵ The positioning of R&D in the company is not clear, so it can't effectively integrate the limited R&D resources, and it can't play the value of R&D in the enterprise.

⑶ The acquisition of R&D demand information is relatively passive, lacking in-depth investigation and analysis of the company's internal and external needs.

⑶ After the initial R&D demand list was formed, there was no corresponding mechanism to screen it, thus forming the final R&D.

Theme.

5. The organizational form of R&D work is unreasonable and lacks overall planning.

[6] In the process of project formulation, project members have no clear and reasonable responsibilities and rights, and the cooperation and coordination of the project are basically promoted by R&D personnel, while other members and departments only passively participate.

Once the basic summary of R&D is rarely done, the knowledge management system is not perfect, and the ideas and achievements of R&D and technology are tied to individuals rather than companies, which undermines the continuity of R&D.

⑻ There is no relevant organization and system to supervise and control the operation of the project, and the project has great risks, and there is also a lack of project evaluation mechanism to scientifically evaluate and analyze the project.

(9) Lack of R&D professionals.

Avoid five misunderstandings in R&D management of enterprises

One of the misunderstandings: R&D management is the business of R&D department.

Myth 2: R&D management reform should be immediate.

Myth 3: IPD is the only choice for R&D management.

Myth 4: IPD is an inseparable part of CMMI.

Myth 5: SMEs don't need R&D management.

How to implement effective R&D management in small and medium-sized enterprises

At present, the excellent R&D management practices in the industry are represented by Integrated Product Development (IPD) advocated by IBM and Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) of SEI in the United States. These two R&D management systems are in the same strain. The combination of them can help enterprises to improve at the macro level such as concept understanding, strategic level and operation framework, and also help enterprises to land at the micro level such as specific implementation and operation guidance.

At present, China is making great efforts to improve its industrial structure and encourage small and medium-sized enterprises to innovate independently. According to the speaker's years of R&D management practice and consulting experience, the following main problems generally exist in R&D management of domestic small and medium-sized enterprises:

Relatively speaking, the top management of small and medium-sized enterprises has a more accurate grasp of the market direction;

The business direction/mode of the enterprise is relatively single, but it is gradually expanding the product field and providing more service forms;

The sales scale and personnel scale of the company, especially the number and organization scale of R&D personnel, expand rapidly with the expansion of business;

The market ability/sales ability of enterprises is generally strong, but the internal R&D often can't keep up with the business speed, resulting in more delays in R&D projects;

Some senior leaders with non-technical background believe that R&D often gets out of control because they don't know how to participate in R&D;

Due to the expansion of the company's business scale/the number of R&D employees, the construction of the organization can't keep up with the speed. In particular, many people have been introduced, but the efficiency of the company has not improved, but it is not as good as the initial stage;

The success of new product development is almost unpredictable, which largely depends on the "talented people, capable people and experts" in the R&D team. However, the growth rate of talents with this ability can't keep up with the increasing new development tasks.

Some experienced employees are imported from outside, but integration has become a problem; Almost everyone does things according to their own experience, and many problems are caused by irregular cooperation between product development members, especially between different functional departments (such as R&D and marketing/commerce, production, procurement, etc.). );

The company has been established for a long time, but it cannot accumulate effective experience at the organizational level; The growth of employees depends entirely on learning from constant mistakes;

The expansion of the company's scale and the deepening of the management level have led to the weakening of the enthusiasm and initiative of employees due to organizational reasons.

Faced with these management system models put forward by international excellent R&D enterprises and organizations, can our small and medium-sized enterprises adopt "takenism" to help them improve themselves? The answer is yes. However, the following principles must be observed:

When building the R&D management system, it is necessary to carry out "overall planning and step-by-step implementation" according to the development stage of the enterprise, which not only solves the short-term problems, but also lays a good foundation for the enterprise to go up a storey still higher in the future.

Grasp the important and urgent improvement points, grasp the improvement points with the highest input-output ratio in the development stage of enterprises, and build a research and development management system to provide impetus for the sustained growth of science and technology in growing enterprises.

In the process of enterprise's R&D system from nonstandard to standard, it is necessary to lay a solid foundation for the continuous growth of enterprises in the ever-changing market environment.

The infrastructure of R&D must be comprehensive and systematic, without relative shortcomings.

R&D system construction will focus on the product development process, and all aspects of improvement can not be discrete and independent.

Therefore, the speaker put forward the early promotion model of small and medium-sized enterprises on the road of improving R&D management ability: 1. R&D strategy and business decision.

2.R&D organization and operation

3. Product development process

4.R&D project management

5.R&D human resource management

6. Customer demand

7. Systems engineering

8. Technology development

9.R&D IT support

10. Skills management ● There is a systematic and standardized method for the key operation items required for product development and quality management, with emphasis on error-prone steps.

● For major decisions such as whether to start or terminate R&D projects, there is a set of very accurate evaluation criteria and decision-making mode to sort them out, so that managers can make decisions in time.

● Carry out various activities (synchronous engineering) at the same time to accelerate product development.

● For cross-departmental communication, there is a good division of powers and responsibilities and coordination mechanism.

Strong market orientation, inviting customers and suppliers to fully participate at the beginning of R&D activities.

● Before the start of R&D activities, the planning and preparation of the whole project have been completed. There are not many enterprises specializing in R&D management consulting in the world. Foreign professional organizations include PRTM and IBM, while domestic professional organizations are only a few such as Zhongtian Huaxia and Han Jie.