Statistical modeling to relate technology readiness to schedule

Abstract

Projects from U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Department of Energy technology development activities provide historical data on project completion timelines versus technology readiness levels that were assessed during the life cycle of a program. A statistical analysis was performed to develop a method to forecast future project completion timelines based on technical maturity assessments. The goodness‐of‐fit of the model used for forecasting also was evaluated, and the null hypothesis that the data follows the probability distribution used for the forecasting model could not be rejected at a Type I error level of 0.05. Several potential extensions to the model using product forecasting methods, semi‐Markov processes, and Bayes nets are presented. The limitations of the statistical modeling and of the potential extensions are also discussed.