Optimal Project Portfolio Execution : Computer Implementation of Models and Simulation Framework

Abstract: This thesis work presents both mathematical models and a simulation approach to get more insight to the R&D Project Portfolio Execution problem. It gives special care to finding the optimal number of projects to run simultaneously in a portfolio in order to get the maximum monetary gain, and give the factors that affect the most this number. This report tries as well to give the best simulation of resources behaviour inside an R&D department, and takes a stage-gate model for the projects. The proposed mathematical model is a Non-Linear Mixed Integer Program that is hard to solve. A simplification lead to a less complicated Mixed Integer Program that is easier to solve. But in order to have an insight of the whole complexity of the problem, a simulation platform has been implemented. Thanks to its low computation cost, it allowed to have a big number of simulations and draw some conclusions about the initial question. The simulation platform also allows to see the influence of different factors on the number of projects that should be executed in parallel in R &D departments, which was hard to do using the mathematical models.