UNDERSTANDING QUALITY FACTORS IN R&D ACTIVITIES: A NEW MODEL FOR QUALITY MANAGEMENT

Project quality management is one out of ten areas of project management defined by the Project Management Institute (PMI). According to definition, it includes the processes for incorporating the organization's quality policy as regards planning, managing, and controlling project and product quality requirements in order to meet stakeholders' objectives. The current paper focuses on R&D (research and development) projects, whose specificity and high-uncertainty of the results requires a specific approach to quality management. In view of the lack of research efforts in this area, the objective was to propose a new, multicriteria based model for R&D project quality management. The construction of this model was based on the review of the extant knowledge and interviews with certified R&D project managers. The model includes factors influencing both the quality of project activities and the quality of R&D results. As a next step, the model was tested based on multi-criteria evaluation of the relative importance of these factors. It has potential, inter alia, to support decision-makers in selection of the optimal project quality management strategy. Finally, relevant recommendations have been provided for researchers and practitioners.